Ukraine to allocate 291 mln USD to boost military depots' safety: official

KIEV, Feb. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Ukrainian government will allocate 291 million U.S. dollars within the next seven years to boost the safety of the country's military warehouses, a senior military official announced here on Tuesday.

Mykola Shvets, chief of the central department of military service security at the Ukrainian armed forces, told reporters that the funds will be used to enhance the resistance of the ammunition depots against fire and explosions.

In particular, Ukraine will build new underground ammunition storage facilities and equip them with modern surveillance and firefighting systems, Shvets said.

The measures will be carried out in the wake of the series of explosions at Ukrainian army warehouses last year.

In September 2017, blasts ripped through a major arms storage facility near the town of Kalynivka, some 250 kilometers southwest of capital Kiev, forcing the evacuation of 30,000 people and damaging 34,000 tons of ammunition.

The explosions were a third similar incident in Ukraine last year. The other two blasts happened in March and earlier in September, also in ammunition depots in the Donetsk and Kharkov regions.

The preliminary investigation showed that the acts of sabotage were likely behind all three incidents.

Local experts have estimated the economic losses from the incidents at 2 billion dollars. Enditem