Not sure this has been the official "explanation" this time, but looking at it from a technical side, there isn't normally anything in a transformer flammable enough to be ignited by a cigarette, even if you could drop it directly into the cooling oil (which you can't: they are normally sealed). My understanding is that you need a sustained arc over several minutes of "normal" electric current, or several lightning strikes to heat up the oil enough to catch fire. That requires some major fault. I guess a suitable type of warhead could cause it eventually, but not immediately.
Hopfgeist
joined 2 years ago
What are we looking at? Incendiary cluster munitions?
Yes, or other light aircraft. Not military. But what is or was in the building is anyone's guess.
I heard about 60 from Jordan. Have to check my sources.
That thing still looks like a combat robot from a science fiction movie. Especially the muzzle devices look so silly. I know they are important as they measure the actual muzzle velocity, which helps to make it as accurate as it is, but still: 
They need more Gepards! They can do it with fewer shots, I guess. But even though slow and low, hitting those things with manually tracked FlaK is no small feat. Well done!
Oh no, another red line! How many were there now?
Normally, the Russian air defense should deal with Tomahawks easily (they've had decades to prepare: Tomahawks are nuclear-capable, so it was a top priority to develop the look-down shoot-down capabilities of the MiG-31 and others), but the way it's been going recently I would give it a substantial chance of getting through to Alabuga.
Nice. My longest-running NetBSD system is a tiny virtual machine I only use for my IRC client, with an uptime of 901 days now, running NetBSD 9.1_STABLE.
The fact that NetBSD 10.0 isn't even released yet shows the slow update cycle for NetBSD. None of the "a major release every year" nonsene. "It will be released when it's ready." I like that, and all my home servers run NetBSD (with the ocassional Linux VM for stuff that is so "all-the-world-is-linux"-narrowminded that I couldn't get it to run natively on NetBSD, such as Collabora Online and BigBlueButton).
I was going to say, "burnt" seems like a bit of an understatement. It even blew the engine block to pieces.
It's over 1,000 km from Ukraine; I don't think they have anything with that range. That is beyond even the elusive Taurus in its original form.
Yes, literally called "Flakpanzer" in German. Or "Flugabwehrkanonenpanzer" in its full form.
Can transformer cooling oil form flammable vapour? Maybe, I guess, if it's hot enough, but I'm not sure. But when the transformer gets hot and explodes it may cause an oil spray fine enough to create a fireball, which may look similar. The first stage of a "proper" BLEVE is normally the "expanding vapor" cloud, which is visible as such, before it has mixed with air sufficiently (and/or reaches an ignition source) to burn and form the fireball. Then again, in smaller ones, and in the dark, the vapour cloud may be so short-lived that it cannot be seen.