To this whole story with the blasts in Belgorod – and not only Belgorod – in which the Russian authorities are intensively accusing Ukraine, I have the following question… How come air raid sirens go off in Russian cities despite all those warnings and "emergency levels" introduced?

After all, Russian media regularly report on some kind of "shelling" from the territory of Ukraine.  Blasts are heard, smoke is seen…  But at the same time, there have been no air raid sirens so far.

 

Meanwhile, in Ukraine, as soon as the Russians launch a missile from its territory or as soon as a  warplane takes off, sirens immediately go off.  Why is it not the case in Russia if there is a real threat to the lives of Russian citizens?

 

It might even seem that in all areas where blasts are heard, sirens simply don"t work.  Or the authorities simply do not care about their people"s lives.  Or… the Russian authorities are trying to ensure that there are victims among the civilian population!

 

But there"s another interesting thing here…

 

On the night of June 22, as always, Iskander ballistic missiles were launched from Belgorod region toward the territory of Ukraine. One of those missiles detonated immediately after launch.

 

In fact, this shows how defective Russian missile weapons are, even those that can conditionally be referred to as modern ones.  And this is worth keeping in mind.

 

It is also worth noting that on the night of July 3, in the Kursk region, a Ukrainian UAV Tu-141 Strizh was allegedly shot down by Russian air defense.  In turn, no identical marks were seen on the presented fragments confirming that it belonged to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

At the same time, as per Russian propagandists, this is not the first time these "Ukrainian" drones – Soviet-era Tu-141 Strizh jet-powered UAVs the size of an F-16, conducting reconnaissance in Russian airspace, are downed.

 

But the fact is that since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia itself often used the Tu-141 Strizh UAVs to divert the attention of Ukrainian air defense and make them expose their positions.

Now the Russians, in this way, imitate some kind of recon efforts by Ukraine, although it is impossible to run any proper rexon missions with this obsolete type of drones.  At the same time, shooting down such a drone allows Russia to claim some type of air defense success.

 

Fiven the above, I don"t rule out that it was either a rogue Russian missile that was shot down over Belgorod or an UAV imitating the Ukrainian threat  that crashed into a residential neighborhood.

 

This explains the absence of sirens – the "threat" was a controlled one.  That is, the missile, or the UAV, was Russian, so triggering the alarm was completely unnecessary.