Russian Warplane Bombs Its Own City by Mistake: Defense Ministry

• A Russian Su-34 mistakenly bombed the Russian city of Belgorod on Thursday, authorities said.
• The blast injured two women and heavily damaged four apartments, per the local governor.
• Footage of the aftermath showed apartment walls blown to bits and wrecked cars.

A Russian jet accidentally bombed the Russian border city of Belgorod on Thursday evening, said Moscow’s defense ministry.

Surveillance footage of the explosion was uploaded to Telegram by the Russian news outlet RBC. It shows a bright flash before a section of the street erupts in flames, and debris is thrown into the air.

“During the flight of the Su-34 aircraft of the Aerospace Forces over the city of Belgorod, an abnormal descent of aviation ammunition occurred,” the ministry told the state media outlet TASS.

Two women were injured in the blast, which left a 60-foot-wide crater in the city center and damaged four apartments, Vyacheslav Gladkov, Belgorod’s governor, wrote on Telegram.

One woman was sent to hospital with a head injury, while the other suffered abrasions and was treated at the scene, Gladkov wrote.

Photos posted by Gladkov showed extensive damage to the nearby apartments — the outer wall of one property was completely blasted apart. Another photo showed what appears to be an entrance blown open.

Four cars were also wrecked by the explosion, according to Gladkov.

“An investigation team and employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations are working on the spot,” Gladkov wrote.

He described a need to “restore traffic on one of the main arteries of the city,” indicating that the explosion occurred in a typically busy area of Belgorod.

Belgorod is some 25 miles from the Ukrainian border, and Russian warplanes often fly over the city on combat missions. It is located around 50 miles from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.

Russia has accused Ukraine of shelling Belgorod throughout the war. Kyiv has repeatedly denied this, blaming Russia for misfiring on its own city.

The Kremlin’s assault on Ukraine has been plagued by humiliating blunders over the last year.

In January, one of its sergeants accidentally detonated a hand grenade in a barracks, killing three of his comrades. Ukrainian and Western observers have also recorded multiple instances of Russian troops firing on their comrades.

The Russian Ministry of Defense did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment sent outside regular business hours.