A gas pipeline inRussia near the far-western border of Kazakhstan was consumed in a fireball—and some believe that the incident has a bearing on Vladimir Putin's tenuous grip on power.
Knewz.com has learned that this blaze follows a string of similar incidents dating back to 2023, and are attributed to neglect as Putin concentrates his resources on his attrition-addled war against Ukraine.
According to the Russian online publication,Izvestia, the blaze affected said pipeline where it intersected an underground storage facility near the country’s western border with Kazakhstan.
The local governor, Roman Busargin, weighed in with an update on his Telegram account saying:
“The landscape fire has now been contained. The remaining gas from the pipeline is burned out, after which the combustion will be stopped.”
“All emergency services are involved in emergency situations.”
In another post less than an hour later, Busargin indicated that the fire had claimed no lives, caused no injuries, and was the result of an accident.
Busargin asserted that the fire did not interrupt the local gas supply and according to the report by Izvestia, blamed overheating and depressurization as its cause.
According to international observers, the incident is a result of Putin’s insatiable war machine and its appetite for resources.
Tender, an X account-holder who professes to be anti-everything tyrannous, added their version of events and said: “This Russian gas underground storage in the Saratov Region exploded in a spectacular fashion.”
According to the netizen, the alleged blast did not occur without warning. It claimed: “Nearby lumberjacks smelled gas one month ago, making an accident likely.”
It went on to attribute the fire to Putin's war saying that “it also tells us that Russia’s unbalanced expenditures into the lost war in Ukraine and ignorance for infrastructure.”
Teller suggested that the incident was a yardstick signaling Russia’s accelerating downfall.
It is not the first time the facility suffered a blaze. In September 2023, the region's energy ministry admitted to an earlier fire in the same area (near Saratov).
It also blamed depressurization and noted that the explosion resulted in a prairie fire that consumed five acres of grass, per Izvestia.
In a more recent incident (March 2024), another blast ripped through a gas pipeline in Western Siberia injuring eight workers.
According to the state-controlled media outlet, TASS, the incident occured when “workers tuned up equipment.” The ensuing explosion was reported to have destroyed the depot.
Russia is the world’s second-largest natural gas producer (alongside the United States) but holds the planet's largest reserves, per Worldometers.
With the latter being the case, it is still a key supplier to the world and the dominantly NATO Western European bloc which has been trying to wean itself off Russia.
According to a recent Bloomberg report, the leases and contracts pertaining to the gas flowing from East to West are set to end in 2024—and the respective governments are currently negotiating for an extension.
