The dramatic explosion of a fuel storage facility in Moscow on Thursday may have been caused not by a Ukrainian drone but instead by a Russian air defense missile, an analysis of social media videos verified by The New York Times indicates.<\/p>\n
The blast became the defining image of Ukraine\u2019s largest-scale drone attack on the Russian capital since the start of the war<\/a>. The Russian authorities said they had shot down 992 Ukrainian drones across the country on Thursday, in addition to those that reached their targets.<\/p>\n The roof of the storage silo flew high into the air, appearing to surf atop a plume of black smoke before plummeting to earth as the installation in southeast Moscow became engulfed in fire.<\/p>\n The possibility that the explosion was a self-inflicted \u201cfriendly fire\u201d incident highlighted the difficulties that Russian air defenses are facing as Ukraine increases the scale of its drone attacks to break through a layered shield of systems designed to protect the capital.<\/p>\n A missile travels in a low-flying trajectory toward the fuel silo, which erupts in an explosion around the time of its arrival at the facility. Experts said the missile looked consistent with a projectile fired from a portable air defense system, commonly called a MANPAD, that soldiers use like guns to down incoming threats.<\/p>\n \u201cThe video strongly supports the supposition that this is a MANPAD launch, in its origin, low trajectory and thin contrail with no accompanying launch smoke in its early moments of flight,\u201d said Michael Clarke, a British security expert and professor of defense studies.<\/p>\n