Fire Breaks Out In Moscow
A Moscow business centre has burst into flames today, the latest in a series of mystery blazes to hit Russia amid rumours of a Ukrainian sabotage campaign.
Dozens of people are feared trapped inside the ten-storey Grand Setun Plaza building in Moscow’s Kuntsevo district after a fire broke out early Friday.
Major-General Alexander Kurenkov, Putin’s former bodyguard who was recently appointed emergencies minister after his predecessor fell to his death from the top of a waterfall, went to the scene to oversee the rescue operation.
Some 120 people had been rescued from the building by firefighters as of late Friday morning, a spokesman for the ministry said.
However, between 20 and 40 people were feared to be trapped inside with no word on their exact whereabouts or condition.
‘The search for people continues,’ the spokesman said as a Ka-32 firefighting helicopter was deployed to the scene.
The exact cause of the fire is currently unknown, but it comes amid a spate of blazes that have struck military and government facilities amid rumours of sabotage.
Moscow has been at the epicentre of the blazes, including one two weeks ago which consumed the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute in the outlying city of Zhukovsky.
The fire began at a power substation supplying the institute, 43 miles southeast of Moscow, which has been crucial to the development of aircraft such as the Su-27, MiG-29, and MiG-31 fighters which are in use in Ukraine.
Two chemical plants with links to the defence industry suffered fires, one at Kaprolaktam, in Dzerzhinsk, which once made chemical weapons, on 4 May, the other two weeks earlier at the Dmitrievsky plant in Kineshma.
Another fire raised questions of sabotage was at a Russian missile design institute in Tver in which 22 weapons officials and designers died.
The blazes may have been sabotage attacks by Ukraine aimed at ‘dissuading [Putin’s] weapons of mass destruction brinkmanship’, says a US expert.
Professor Douglas London, of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and a retired 34-year CIA operations officer, told Foreign Policy that some recent incidents may have been sabotage linked to the war.
‘US and allied enabling of a Ukrainian sabotage campaign inside Russia telegraphs a significant and escalating cost Putin can ill afford,’ he said.
Russia’s leading independent gun-maker urged the Russian authorities to be more suspicious of sabotage over the wave of fires.
Vladislav Lobaev said: ‘The Dmitrievsky chemical plant in the city of Kineshma burned down.
‘It is the largest Russian manufacturer of chemical solvents used in a variety of industries….
‘Separately, the building of the defence research Institute in Tver burned to the ground…
‘It was at this institute that the Iskanders and the S-400 were developed.’
He warned: ‘It is hard to believe in such coincidences, especially with large or such iconic enterprises.
‘In wartime, it is necessary to work out the version of sabotage more actively.’
Source: DailyMail
