In late 2021, a Russian-language Telegram channel posted a video tutorial and instructions for the synthesis of tetraamminecopper nitrate from copper wire, ammonia solution and ammonium nitrate – readily available precursors, which through a relatively simple procedure, lead to the formation of a homemade explosive of medium power and sensitivity, for use as a booster charge in detonators and as a main charge in small IEDs.
Despite the impressively simple method for its production, TACN is not familiar from past discourse between online extremists or jihadists. Its recent dissemination in a channel affiliated with Belarusian antigovernment activists, as well as in a Chinese-language channel sympathetic to the Uyghur struggle, both of which are solely dedicated to the distribution of HME and weaponry instructional content, is worrying, and potentially acquaints a more radical, possibly extremist pool of followers with the attractiveness of the production and the use of TACN as a HME.
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