Late last night, a Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber accidentally dropped what appeared to be a 1,100 pound bomb near apartment buildings in Belgorod, Russia, a city near the Ukrainian border with a population of 340,000. No reports yet of whether vodka was involved. The Associated Press reports:
"The explosion late Thursday was far more powerful than anything Belgorod residents had experienced before. Witnesses reported a low hissing sound followed by a blast that made nearby apartment buildings tremble and shattered their windows.
It left a 20-meter (66-foot) -wide crater in the middle of a tree-lined boulevard flanked by apartments, damaged several cars and threw one vehicle onto a store roof. Two people were injured, and a third person was later hospitalized with hypertension, authorities said."
The immediate reaction by residents and aggressive Russian military bloggers was that it was a drone attack by Ukraine. That was cleared up later when the Russian Defense Ministry had to admit that one of its aircraft dropped the bomb accidentally on its way to bomb a hardened Ukrainian target:
"Military experts charged that the weapon appeared to have been set to explode with a small delay after impact that would allow it to hit underground facilities."
After displaying this level of military competence, we're hoping that the Russian air force starts flying over the Kremlin with full bomb loads.
(photo: A damaged apartment building in Belgorod. Telegram / Vyacheslav Gladkov / AP)
