Accident or Sabotage? Mysterious Massive Power Outages Plague Russia, Including at Top-Secret Bullet Factory

Multiple casualties were reported following the breakdown of power stations during the early stages of winter in Russia, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without heat, according to sources.

The outage occurred 30 miles south of Moscow. Officials in the city of Klimovsk attribute the disruption to a station within a munitions plant, the Yuri Andropov Cartridge Plant, reportedly a top-secret bullet factory named after the Soviet Union leader succeeding Leonid Brezhnev.

While Russian military authorities have not provided an explanation for the outage, a state of emergency was been declared in the region surrounding the plant. The lack of heating led to protests in local streets, according to The Sun.

One protest video claims police "arrived quickly to disrupt us," adding, "I wish they’d bring back the heating as fast as they dispatched the cops.”

In another, The Sun reported, a person laments the dire situation, saying, “Grandmothers are freezing at home. The hospitals are cold, everywhere is cold. We need to do something to solve this… we get only excuses."

EssaNews.com reported on residents in suburbs sharing images of cracked radiators, frozen water on stairs and ice on walls and windows.

A separate power station outage occurred in Lytkarino, a Moscow suburb, prompting residents to burn fires outdoors for warmth.

A homemade video captured residents' sentiment: “We burn wood because it's too cold at home," a person notes. "It is warmer even outside.”

Several other Russian cities also experienced mysterious power outages during the chilliest season of the year. Residents in affected areas are calling for accountability, with some pointing fingers at Andrei Vorobyov, a regional governor in Moscow, while others suspect sabotage.

One popular theory suggests that an inadequate allocation of funds to electrical maintenance, possibly due to excessive spending on the conflict with Ukraine, might be at the root of the issue.

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The Ukrainian version of Pravda traces the origin of the troubles back to Jan. 4 when a transformer substation in northeast Moscow caught fire. However, in that instance, city officials were able to switch to a backup power source and restore heating after just hours.

Despite cold winter weather in Russia being the norm, with Moscow experiencing a morning lows of below zero on Jan. 8, frustrations persist. The Weather Channel forecasts bitterly cold conditions for at least the next two weeks.

Ukrainian activists found the situation ironic. Former Ukrainian government official Anton Gerashchenko, for example, highlighted the disparity between President Vladimir Putin's military spending and the fact “people freeze in their own homes in regions of Russia that are supposedly 'rising from its knees.'”