Vladimir Putin will be furious Russia didn’t come up with the idea of using exploding pagers and walkie-talkies to take out his enemies, a former spymaster has suggested.
Devices used by Hezbollah exploded in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday, killing at least 37 and maiming civilians in attacks pinned on Israel.
Ex-military planner Philip Ingram told The Sun: “He [Putin] uses novel methods of assassinating people, and you know he’s probably sitting there with his design team saying, ‘Why have you not got me exploding pagers beforehand?'”
The expert suggested Putin could be eyeing a similar attack to that seen in Lebanon, but counter-intelligence officers around the world will be readying countries’ defences.
He warned airports and planes have been rendered more vulnerable to potential attacks in the wake of the devices attacks.
Many fear they are a prelude to an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Shiite group which is Lebanon’s most powerful armed force.
A war threatens to inflict devastation on Lebanon, spark heavy missile fire into Israeli cities, and further destabilise a region already shaken by the Gaza war.
Meanwhile, a huge Ukrainian drone attack set multiple Russian arms depots ablaze, destroying what Ukraine’s General Staff said were thousands of tons of weaponry, including North Korean missiles.
Ukraine directed more than 100 drones at Russia and the occupied Crimean peninsula overnight, Russian news reports and the Defence Ministry said on Saturday (September 21).
The strikes set an arms depot on fire that appeared to be in the same town as one struck by Ukrainian drones earlier this week, wounding 13 people and also causing a huge blaze. Arms and ammunition depots were also hit in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region.
Russian authorities temporarily closed a 62-mile stretch of motorway and evacuated passengers from a railway station after a fire caused a series of explosions near the town of Toropets, in Russia’s Tver region.
Unverified images circulating on Telegram on Saturday showed a massive ball of flame rising into the night sky and dozens of smoke trails from detonations.
In its latest intelligence update, Britain’s Ministry of Defence called the Toropets site one of Russia’s largest strategic ammunition depots “directly supporting its operation in Ukraine”.
It said the strike reported on Wednesday likely caused “enormous losses of ordnance”. The update posted on X referenced reports of North Korean missiles being stored at Toropets, but didn’t independently confirm it.
An ammunition depot and missile arsenal in southwestern Russia also caught fire in a separate attack on Saturday in the Krasnodar region, triggering evacuations after the blaze caused a series of blasts near the town of Tikhoretsk.
