Arysi grin

In Kazakhstan, a whole city was evacuated due to the explosion of ammunition

On the morning of June 24, in the Kazakhstan city of Arys, this is in the recently created Turkestan region, 147 kilometers from the regional center - an explosion of explosions in the ammunition storage occurred. Some shells remaining from the Afghan war scattered around the city, destroying several buildings. The Ministry of Defense of Kazakhstan until the evening was silent about the types of ammunition, but later it admitted: in the warehouses there are many expired shells that they simply did not have time to take out for liquidation.

The city of Arys is a typical settlement of Kazakhstani South: almost always very warm, no growth prospects, several city -forming enterprises. In Arysi, this is a railway (the station is one of the important points on the Senburg -Tashkent segment) and the repair plants of locomotives. Another 43-thousandth city has military unit No. 44856 of the Ministry of Defense of Kazakhstan, and in this part there is a repository of ammunition for their further disposal. At 9:20 in the morning (6:20 Moscow time), a fire suddenly began in the warehouse, after which a powerful explosion occurred. The mushroom from the explosion was visible in neighboring areas, and in a number of Arysi areas in residential buildings it knocked out glass and brought down ceilings.

A panic began in the city.

People in a hurry began to leave the territory of the city. Numerous videos show that many run away from Arysi even on foot (especially since many cars simply do not stop). The akim of the Turkestan region (analogue of the Russian governor) Umirzaku Shukeev took about an hour and a half to announce the need for urgent evacuation of the whole city. By that time, Arys, however, was already empty almost half. At the same time, in the first hours of the Ministry of Defense, confirming the version of the fire, the absence of the victims spoke. But journalists only counted at least 70 wounded with burns and injuries brought from Arysi to neighboring cities. Among them are at least five children. By the morning of June 25, two dead were officially announced: this is a soldier of the military unit and a resident of the city who tried to escape from Arysi, but a random shell flew into his car.

Now in the region an emergency regime has been established. “All areas are mobilized, all nearest settlements. Now we see that we need to evacuate the city. Therefore, columns will move in all directions. Special machines will be selected and taken to specially organized camps. All the Akims of the districts with their teams will have to arrange camps, make lists of those who came, figure out who to place relatives, whom in the districts in the hotel, ”said Umirzak Shukeev.

On the evening of June 24, President Kasym-Zhomart Tokaev flew to the evacuation points. A striking contrast with the previous thirty years: the president in a regular jacket and with a minimum of security came to the victims and personally assured that "we will restore the city, everything will be fine." The inhabitants of Arysi, dumbfounded from such a picture, conducted Tokayev with applause.

The reasons for the fire and subsequent explosions will still be established, but experts unanimously note that the emergency became for the authorities and the military a great surprise. This is all the more surprising that over the past 10 years only in Arysi, at least four major incidents with ammunition have occurred. The largest happened in March 2009 on the territory of the NPO “Kazarsenal”: then, during the disposal of ammunition, an explosion occurred. Three people died, 17 was injured. In addition, in 2013 , during the disposal of ammunition in Otar (another city in the south of Kazakhstan), four people died due to the explosion, three more were crippled. And in 2001 in the Karaganda region, the largest ammunition warehouse in the country was burning for several days in the country. Then the village-1300 people-also had to be evacuated, the Prime Minister was supervised by the process, who, by coincidence, was the current President Tokaev.

It is important that no one knows (and does not officially talk about it), how many ammunition was in the exploded storage.

By the evening of June 24, the Ministry of Defense could only say that there were definitely no aviation bombs. It also turned out that the disposal of ammunition, some of which remained already from the USSR war in Afghanistan, lasted since 2005, but they “simply did not have time to eliminate everything.” According to the available video explosions and pictures of the wounded, the experts of Novaya said that gunpowder was precisely burned in warehouses, and some victims have clearly seen fragmentation wounds - that is, we can talk about detonation of shells for howitzers.

The most important violation that could definitely be allowed is that the residential buildings stood from the warehouse at a distance of only 200 meters (although the non -residential zone should be at least three, and preferably all five kilometers). The military says that we are talking about unauthorized buildings, and they generally proposed expanding the distance from warehouses to the city to 20 kilometers, but no one approved this, and there was allegedly lacked money for a faster disposal of ammunition.

In general, the problem of disposal of ammunition in Kazakhstan is not the first year: the journalist of the Ratel.kz investigation site Gennady Benditsky wrote for several years in a row that poor -quality equipment was installed at the ammunition disposal plants, and some shells are almost sprinkled manually. In addition, the entire industry is permeated with corruption, since "each shell is kilograms of ferrous and non -ferrous metal, plus a brass sleeve, plus kilograms of gunpowder and TNT." At the Ministry of Defense of Kazakhstan, a profile waste disposal enterprise was even created (the number of overdue ammunition in the country cannot be calculated), but, according to Benditsky, several years ago it consisted of people who were relatives.

What has changed since then? Several defense ministers have changed in Kazakhstan. The company for the disposal of ammunition, judging by the official site, operates on the same equipment. The site of the investigations Ratel.kz was defeated and closed. Journalist Gennady Benditsky died in 2017 on the day of his 47th anniversary. Explosions in the warehouses of ammunition continue.

The incident in Arysi lay on time for a wide public resonance from news about the possible construction with the help of Russia of a nuclear power plant in Kazakhstan. In February 2019, the Russian Ambassador to Kazakhstan Alexei Borodavkin said that perhaps "soon a decision will be made to build a nuclear power plant in your country, which, as we hope, will build a dew."

The idea to build a nuclear power plant caused such a huge indignation (heated soon by the Chernobyl series) that the authorities for the first time in a long time were forced to officially say that no decision on construction would be made without coordination with the people.

The explosion in the ammunition warehouse added points to the opponents of the construction of the nuclear power plant: even if the power shells are not able to cope, what will happen if an explosion happens at nuclear power plants - especially taking into account the fact that they intended to build it in the Almaty region, where earthquakes occur every week?