War comes home to Russia in tranquil lakeside town

By Lucy Papachristou and Mark Trevelyan

LONDON (Reuters) - Elena is scouring the town for window glass. Irina wants boards and beams to fix holes in her roof.

Nearly a week after a Ukrainian drone blew up an ammunition depot in the Russian town of Toropets, triggering an explosion as powerful as a small earthquake, its people are struggling to repair homes and grappling with the shock of what hit them, judging by posts in a community chatroom.

In the days before the attack, the small lakeside town of just over 11,000 residents had hosted a sailing competition for teenagers from across Russia, earning a rare mention on state television. Weeks earlier, it marked the 950th anniversary of its founding with an arts and music festival and a special tasting of local fish soup.

Toropets is a striking example of a quiet town far from the frontlines in Ukraine where the war, raging now for more than two and a half years, has suddenly come home to Russia.

Pictures captured by satellite imaging company Maxar reveal the scale of destruction near the weapons store, which lay between two lakes about 5 km (3 miles) from the town centre.

Images taken before the explosion show an extensive complex of more than four dozen buildings spaced out several metres apart, with a crane offloading material from railcars nearby.

Six years ago, a then-deputy defence minister boasted of the facility's state-of-the-art concrete storage bunkers, designed to store missiles, ammunition and explosives.

"It ensures their reliable and safe storage, protects them from air and missile strikes and even from the damaging factors of a nuclear explosion", the RIA state news agency quoted Dmitry Bulgakov as saying. He was arrested on bribery charges in July.

The Maxar images, taken four days after the Ukrainian drone strike, show the complex in ruins, with a massive crater stretching nearly 82 metres (270 feet) wide. Several storage buildings and bunkers are completely obliterated, surrounded by naked tree trunks stripped of their foliage. A rail line running through a forested area nearby has also taken a hit, with several cars smashed to smithereens.

SPECIAL OPERATION

When President Vladimir Putin launched his February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he called it a "special military operation", not a war. The phrase, still used by the Kremlin, seemed designed to reassure Russians that normal life would carry on undisturbed while the army got the job done.

Over time, however, the impact on Russia's own security has become impossible to hide. Scores of people have been killed by shelling and drone attacks on the western Belgorod region. In August, Ukraine sent thousands of troops into neighbouring Kursk and carved out a slice of territory from which Russia has yet to eject them. This month, a drone strike killed a woman in Moscow.

Yet deadly attacks on Russian soil have not translated into serious public questioning of Putin's narrative, given his repression of political opponents and dominance of state media.

The Kremlin has portrayed the strikes as "terrorist" acts by a Ukrainian leadership in thrall to the United States. It has warned the U.S. and its allies they will be fighting Moscow directly, and will face serious consequences, if they give the green light for Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia with long-range missiles.

Many Russians are trying to ignore the reality of the war, according to data from Levada, a respected independent pollster. In August, it found 34% of respondents were "quite attentively" following the conflict and 19% were tracking it closely, compared with 47% who were not paying much or any attention. Just under a third of people were worried about the state of the "special military operation", compared with 52% who were fretting about rising prices.

Judging by comments posted on VK, Russia's leading social media site, the residents of Toropets do not expect their plight to resonate widely with fellow Russians. State media gave scant coverage to last week's attack.

Many locals reacted with bitterness and scepticism when people from other regions posted sympathetic messages in the hours after the huge blast.

There were signs of panic, as people who had fled inquired about missing relatives or pets and asked whether buildings were still standing. Some messages showed anger at the authorities - one woman accused them of negligence and demanded to know why the ammunition had not been stored underground.

Others were defiant. One woman from the town, Yulia Burlakova, told Reuters in an online exchange that the reaction of locals had been "steadfast and calm, in defiance of our enemies." In a community chat on VK, she posted a copy of a patriotic poem entitled "We will stand our ground".

Since the attack, regional governor Igor Rudenya has visited the town to inspect rebuilding work, and authorities have set up a hotline for people in need of food, water, blankets and other essentials.

One woman told Reuters she had been unable to get through by phone to ask for help for her relatives, whose windows had been smashed by the strength of the blast.

She said she planned to submit a written request and then wait for an inspection team to visit her family's home. "Judging by everything, it will take a long time," she said.

(Reporting by Lucy Papachristou and Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)