Kyiv is testing Kremlin's 'red lines' by striking its arms depots

Over the past week, Ukraine has hit three Russian munitions depots within four days, all with domestically produced weapons.

The attacks are widely seen as Kyiv demonstrating its ability to strike targets deep inside Russia and are now calling the Western allies to lift their restrictions on delivered missile use, also exposing Moscow's alleged "red lines". 

Last Wednesday, Ukraine struck the depot in Toropets, in Russia's region of Tver. Estonian Defence Forces Intelligence Centre stated that the strike caused 30,000 tonnes of various munitions to explode, noting that the size of the explosion was equal to simultaneously blowing up 750,000 artillery shells.

This means that the attacks destroyed enough Russian ammo to affect Russian operations in the coming months, the Institute for the Study of War estimated. 

The UK Ministry of Defence made its own assessment public, adding that the Toropets depot is one of the most important ones in Russia. Renovated in 2018, it directly supported Moscow's operations in Ukraine.

In its intelligence update over the weekend, the UK defence ministry said that recent improvements to the site had been driven by previously poor storage of ageing explosive material, leading to a series of explosions across several depots. 

But given that the explosion at Toropets caused an equivalent of a mild earthquake, it is highly likely that poor storage of munitions caused a chain reaction of cascading detonations within the bunker system.

Then, on Saturday, Kyiv's forces hit the depot in Oktyabrsky, about 16 kilometres south of Toropets, and another one in Tikhoretsk in the Krasnodar region. 

The Ukrainian General Staff reported that the Tikhoretsk arsenal contained at least 2,000 tonnes of munition,