A massive explosion saw flames and smoke billow up into the sky at a Russian chemical plant during an upsurge in sabotage of facilities linked to the military.
Railway tankers containing solvents caught fire by a huge factory in Dzerzhinsk, which has made chemical weapons.
A fire train was deployed to fight the raging inferno in the industrial city which is 250 miles east of Moscow and more than 150 emergency service workers spent nine hours battling the fire covering over 2,500 square metres, on Wednesday.
It is one of many attacks that have been taking place on strategic sites with military links on Russian soil since the Ukraine invasion.
And as Vladimir Putin is rumoured to be considering mass army mobilisation, a video has been shared showing a Russian military enlistment office hit by multiple Molotov cocktails.
Another blaze that officially killed 22 at a defence ministry missile design research institute, and an attack that saw three die at an explosive plant, are also seen as possible arson with the Russian authorities also being accused of playing down incidents.
There remains suspicion over the cause of a fire which killed 22 at the top secret missile-designing defence plant in Tver and saw some of the country’s top missile designers die and their work destroyed.
Some military scientists jumped for their lives from windows at the burning plant which develops new space and weapons systems.
And in a gigantic fire on Monday three women died at explosives manufacturer Perm Gunpowder Plant, which supplies the army.
The plant makes Grad and Smerch multiple launch rocket systems, used by Russian forces in Ukraine, and air defence systems as well as tank rounds, while also supplying gunpowder for small arms.
The dead explosives workers were named as Svetlana Bardakova, 59, Olga Savishchenko, 43, and Ulyana Frants, 36.
An eyewitness told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper: "The building just flew into the air” and the facility at the plant “just doesn't exist anymore”.
One of the dead Svetlana Bardakova “couldn't even run out, but the other girls fled - they were all burned. Olga (Savishchenko) had 100 per cent body burns. She was not even taken to the hospital.
“But Ulyana (Frants) was alive, she had 99% burns, and her son in the second grade is waiting for her at home. I don’t know how to go to work any more. I cried all night.”
In another case, blame has been put on faulty wiring and a criminal case is under way into a fire which razed the Second Central Research Institute of the Ministry of Defence causing untold damage to Russian weapons research.
Suspicions have been voiced that the fire was sabotage.
The institute is central to the design of Iskander missiles, which have been unleashed in the war in Ukraine, as well as Russia ’s S-400 missile defence system.
And human rights group gulagu.net viewed this week’s attack on the military enlistment office in Nizhnevartovsk, that caused a fire and no reported injuries, as an “anti-war protest”.
Pro-government sources said that two Molotov cocktails were thrown and a third failed to catch fire.
