An explosion caused the partial collapse of a bridge linking the Crimean peninsula with Russia on Saturday, damaging a key supply artery for the Kremlin’s war effort in southern Ukraine. Three people were killed in the explosion, Russian authorities said.
The speaker of the Kremlin-backed Crimean regional parliament immediately blamed Ukraine, although the Kremlin did not place blame. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly threatened to strike the bridge and some praised the attack, but Kyiv stopped short of claiming responsibility.
The attack came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin turned 70, dealing a humiliating blow that could see him up the ante in his war against Ukraine.
Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee said a truck bomb set seven rail cars carrying fuel on fire, leading to a “partial collapse of two sections of the bridge”.
A man and a woman riding in a vehicle across the bridge were killed in the blast and their bodies were recovered, Russia’s Investigative Committee said. He did not provide details about the third victim.
The Crimean peninsula has symbolic value for Russia and is key to maintaining its military operations in the south. If the bridge becomes inoperable, it would be much more difficult to transport supplies to the peninsula. While Russia seized areas of northern Crimea early in the invasion and built a land corridor there along the Sea of Azov, Ukraine is pressing a counter-offensive to retake them.
The bridge has train and car sections. Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee specified that the explosion and fire caused the collapse of two sections of one of the two links of the automobile bridge, while another link was intact.
Russia’s energy ministry said Crimea has enough fuel for 15 days, adding that it was working on ways to replenish stocks.
Authorities suspended passenger train traffic across the bridge until further notice. Putin was informed of the explosion and ordered the creation of a government panel to deal with the emergency.
Essential Link
The 19-kilometer bridge across the Kerch Strait connecting the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov was inaugurated in 2018 and is the longest in Europe. It has provided an essential link to the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
The $3.6 billion US project is a tangible symbol of Moscow’s claims over Crimea. It was Russia’s only land link to the peninsula until Russian forces seized more Ukrainian territory at the northern end of the Sea of Azov in heavy fighting, particularly around the city of Mariupol, building a corridor land to Crimea earlier this year.
A girl writes on a Ukrainian flag as people look at an exhibition of tanks and military equipment on display next to the Golden Domed St. Michael Monastery in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday. (Ed Ram/Getty Images)
The speaker of Crimea’s Kremlin-backed regional parliament blamed Ukraine for the explosion but played down the extent of the damage and said it would be repaired quickly.
“Now they have something to be proud of: for 23 years of their management, they failed to build anything worthy of attention in Crimea, but they managed to damage the surface of the Russian bridge,” said Vladimir Konstantinov, the president. of the Council of State of the Republic, he wrote on Telegram.
Kyiv reacts to the explosion
The parliamentary leader of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s party did not say on Saturday that Kyiv was responsible for the incident, but appeared to have made it as a result of Moscow’s seizure of Crimea and attempts to integrate the peninsula with the Russian mainland.
“Russian illegal construction is starting to unravel and catch fire. The reason is simple: if you build something explosive, sooner or later it will explode,” David Arakhamia, leader of the Servant of the People party, wrote on Telegram .
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—@KatyaMalofeyeva
“And this is just the beginning. Of all things, reliable construction is not something that Russia is particularly famous for,” he said.
Other Ukrainian officials were more celebratory, though they have yet to claim responsibility. The Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, posted a video on his Twitter with the burning Kerch Bridge on the left side and a video with Marilyn Monroe singing her famous Happy Birthday Mr. President on the right side.
An adviser to Zelenskyy, Mykhailo Podolyak, tweeted: “Crimea, the bridge, the beginning. Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia he must be expelled.
In Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that “the reaction of the Kyiv regime to the destruction of civilian infrastructure shows its terrorist character.”
In August, Russia suffered a series of explosions at an air base and a munitions depot in Crimea, underscoring its vulnerability.
The blast on the bridge came hours after explosions rocked the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv early on Saturday, sending plumes of smoke into the sky and triggering a series of secondary explosions.
A woman is helped by a Ukrainian firefighter out of a shelter after Russian shelling in Kharkiv, Ukraine, early Saturday. (Francisco Seco/The Associated Press)
Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov told Telegram that the early morning explosions were the result of missile attacks in the city center. He said the explosions caused fires in one of the city’s medical institutions and a non-residential building. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Concentrated attacks
The blasts came hours after Russia focused attacks in its increasingly troubled invasion of Ukraine on areas it illegally annexed, while the death toll from earlier missile attacks on apartment buildings in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia rose to 14.
On Friday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to human rights organizations in its Russia and Ukraine, and to an activist jailed in Belarus, a Moscow ally.
Berit Reiss-Andersen, chairman of the committee, said the honor was for “three outstanding defenders of human rights, democracy and peaceful coexistence”, although it has been widely seen as a rebuke to Putin and the his conduct in the worst armed conflict in Europe since the Second World War. war
Putin signed documents on Wednesday to illegally claim four regions of Ukraine as Russian territory, including the Zaporizhzhia region, home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, whose reactors were shut down last month.
The move was foreshadowed by Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014, which took place after Moscow alleged residents of the peninsula had voted to join Russia. This move was widely condemned and led to sanctions from the US and the European Union.