“In the Chelyabinsk region, an explosion took place at the Plasticmas military factory, killing at least 12 people. Governor Oleksiy Teksler announced that the search for 10 more people is ongoing, and five victims are in serious condition”, — write: www.radiosvoboda.org
The search for 10 more people continues, he said. Five people were hospitalized in serious condition.
“A municipal state of emergency will be declared in the Kopei city district. The investigation is ongoing, all the circumstances of the tragedy will be established. I want to emphasize once again that we are not talking about a UAV attack,” the head of the region wrote. At the same time, according to the Astra telegram channel, the threat of a UAV attack was announced in the city.
The incident happened on October 22. Two explosions were reported – the second occurred in the center of the outbreak after the first.
The reasons for the explosions are still unknown.
The governor did not specify the name of the enterprise, but eyewitnesses reported that the explosions occurred at the military plant “Plasmats”, which is part of the structure of the “Rostec” corporation and, among other things, produces and disposes of explosives, weapons and ammunition.
In 2024, the state corporation reported that since the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine, the plant “increased the production of military products five times”, which included “a wide range of modern ammunition for field, naval, anti-aircraft and tank artillery, certain types of aviation means of destruction.”
This was the second incident in a week at the Rostec enterprise. On October 18, the second explosion in a year and a half occurred at the Rostec plant “Avangard” in Sterlitamak. Three women died, the head of Bashkortostan, Radii Khabirov, said. Before that, on August 5, 2024, an explosion occurred at the enterprise, when a repair crew was dismantling a pipeline in one of the workshops. All three members of the brigade died.