Russian plane accidentally strikes Russian city near Ukraine border leaving 20m crater

A Russian warplane accidentally fired a weapon into the city of Belgorod near Ukraine, causing an explosion and damaging buildings, the Russian defence ministry said.

Late on Thursday, local authorities reported a large blast in the city, which lies just across the border from Ukraine. The regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said three people had been injured.

“As a Sukhoi Su-34 air force plane was flying over the city of Belgorod there was an accidental discharge of aviation ammunition,” the defence ministry said, according to the Russian state-owned news agency Tass.

Gladkov, announcing a state of emergency, said on Telegram there was a crater measuring 20 metres (65ft) across on one of the main streets. Four cars and four blocks of flats were damaged, he added. “Thank God there are no dead,” he said.

The defence ministry did not say what kind of weapon was involved. The Su-34 is a supersonic fighter-bomber jet. Tass reported that the ministry had announced an investigation was under way.

Thursday’s explosion also once again highlights the strain of the 14-month-old war on the Russian military machine.

Russian pro-war commentators initially blamed Ukraine for the blast and questioned why Kyiv was able to launch an attack on the centre of Belgorod. “Ukrainian special services show that they can blow up almost everything. Our response must be tougher,” the pro-Kremlin analyst Sergei Markov wrote on Telegram shortly after the news was reported.

However, Russian armed forces, which have previously been criticised by their own people for a lack of transparency, were quick to admit the explosion was a result of a military blunder. Their swift response indicates that potential Ukrainian strikes on Russia remain a sensitive issue for the Kremlin.

Video footage of the area posted on social media on Friday appeared to show a powerful explosion near a busy street at night. Other footage showed piles of concrete on the street, several damaged cars and a building with broken windows. One image showed what appeared to be a car upside down on the roof of a store.

The Belgorod region is one of several parts of southern Russia where targets such as fuel and ammunition stores have been rocked by explosions since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian jets fly frequently over the city on their way to Ukraine.

Last October, a Russian military jet crashed into a residential building shortly after taking off near the border with Ukraine, causing a major fire that killed 15 people. In total, at least 10 Russian military jets have crashed after malfunctioning since Moscow launched its invasion in February, according to the Bell, a Russian media outlet.