Russia-Ukraine Flash Report 18 JUN 2023 16:00 PDT - Impact at Rykove Russian Ammo Depot Known

The ammunition depot was located at the grain elevators by the Partizan Railroad Station and railyard in the center of Rykove. Insurgent and local resident reports claimed that ammunition continued to cook off for six hours. In the June 17, 2023 Situation Report, we linked to two videos that indisputably show ammunition cookoffs and extensive secondary explosions. NASA FIRMS suggests there were rockets within the cache, indicating three spot fires around Rykove.

The grain elevators were located in the center of the settlement and 200 meters from a school and civilian housing. Reports claim that the train tracks and infrastructure are damaged. The resolution is poor in the above picture, but it does suggest rail cars were destroyed (lower left) and the infrastructure for electric trains is clearly destroyed. Russia is running diesel trains, so the electrical failure won't impact capabilities. The tracks will need to be cleared, inspected, and repaired, but this is the one military function where Russia has world-leading capabilities.

The disabled rail line connects to Melitopol, and this is the third section of rail destroyed in the last five days.

It has been confirmed that this was a military strike by Ukrainian officials and not a "smoking accident," or as the Russian MOD likes to say, "a violation of safety rules and protocols." Our sources tell us that Ukraine knew this was a logistics and supply node for some time but had waited until there were more assets at the location before initiating the strike.

There has been no comment from Amnesty International about Russian forces storing tons of ammunition 200 meters from schools and houses.

It is yet to be seen if this was a well-timed strike or if Russian forces simply moved large, unsafe, open-air ammunition depots out of HIMARS range. Another issue for the Russian Ministry of Defense is that isn't getting talked about enough. While Ukraine's subordinate attacks to a future larger push - somewhere - are moving more slowly than most want to see, they are pushing southward. Every kilometer of advance brings HIMARS and other resources one kilometer closer to these rear areas. In the Melitopol direction, it won't take much of an advance to force other large ammunition depots and troop concentrations to be moved to occupied Crimea, which is bottlenecked by two rail and three road crossings.

The videos at Rykove illustrate why we were dismissive of Russian claims in May of large ammunition caches being destroyed at Pavlohrad. While the initial explosions were incomprehensibly massive, there weren't any extended secondary cookoffs and no sustained fires that last for hours. From the time of the Russian missile strike to the fire burning itself out was around three hours.