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.
Putin immediately ordered a “government commission” to look into the “emergency” of the Kerch bridge in Crimea, Russian state media TASS reported.
The speaker of Crimea’s Kremlin-backed regional parliament immediately blamed Ukraine, although Moscow 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. Russian authorities say a truck bomb has caused a fire and the collapse of a section of a bridge linking Russia’s annexed Crimea with Russia. (AP)
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 origin of the explosion is still unclear.
The tanker was on the 19-kilometer-long bridge, the longest in Europe and strategically important because it links Russia’s Krasnodar region with Russia’s annexed Crimean peninsula.
The bridge crosses the Kerch Strait, which connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Azov.
The peninsula has symbolic value for Russia and is key to maintaining its military operations in southern Ukraine. If the bridge became inoperable, it would be much more difficult to transport supplies to Crimea.
While Russia seized areas north of 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.
Smoke rises after large explosions in Kharkiv, Ukraine, early Saturday, Oct. 8, 2022. (AP)
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.
The speaker of Crimea’s Kremlin-backed regional parliament blamed Ukraine for the explosion but downplayed the extent of the damage and said the bridge 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.
The parliamentary leader of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s party on Saturday did not claim Kyiv was responsible, but appeared to have issued it as a result of Moscow’s seizure of Crimea and attempts to integrate the peninsula with the Russian mainland.
Russian authorities say a truck bomb has caused a fire and the collapse of a section of a bridge linking Russia’s annexed Crimea with Russia. (AP)
“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 .
“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.
Ukraine’s postal service announced it would issue stamps commemorating the blast, saying in a statement that the images would be based on classic movie posters to highlight the bridge’s “sacred importance” to Moscow. The postal service previously released a set of stamps commemorating the sinking of the Moskva, a Russian flagship, by a Ukrainian strike in late May.
Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, posted a video on Twitter with the Kerch Bridge on fire on the left and a video of Marilyn Monroe singing her famous “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” on the right.
The bridge is a key supply artery for Moscow’s faltering war effort in southern Ukraine (AP)
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 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.”
The Kerch bridge is capable of carrying 40,000 cars a day and moving 14 million passengers and 13 million tons of cargo a year, state news agency RIA Novosti reported when the bridge opened in 2018.
The Association of Russian Travel Agencies estimates that around 50,000 tourists were on holiday in Crimea at the time of the blast. The head of Russia’s top tourism body, Ilya Umansky, told the Interfax news agency that ferry links between the peninsula and the mainland had been relaunched on Saturday, but admitted that those wanting to enter Crimea in the coming days will suffer “some discomfort”.
A woman is helped by a Ukrainian firefighter out of a shelter after a Russian bombing in Kharkiv, Ukraine. (AP)
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.
Ukrainian officials accused Russia of hitting Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, with surface-to-air missiles and said at least one person was injured. The strikes targeted the mostly residential neighborhoods of Saltivka and Osnovianskiy, regional governor Oleh Sinehubov said on Telegram.
Sinehubov said Russia had deployed S-300 missiles in the attack. If true, it would mark the latest in a series of cases in which Moscow has been reported to have repurposed a weapon originally designed for air defense to hit ground targets, possibly due to a shortage of more suitable munitions.
Ukrainian authorities in the northern Sumy region, west of Kharkiv and a frequent target of Russian bombing and missile attacks, also reported on Saturday that five towns and villages had been hit overnight. Dmytro Zhyvytskyi, the regional governor, told Telegram that a 51-year-old civilian had been killed.
Russian rockets also hit three cities in front of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe. Regional governor Valentyn Reznichenko said no one was injured in the strikes in the towns of Marganets, Chervonohryhorivka and Myrove.
However, the nuclear plant has lost its last remaining source of external power as a result of the new bombing and now relies on emergency diesel generators, the UN nuclear watchdog said on Saturday.
Meanwhile, the death toll from earlier missile attacks on apartment buildings in Zaporizhzhia rose to 17, Ukrainian emergency services said.
Ukrainian soldiers embrace as Russians retreat
The State Emergency Service of Ukraine wrote on Telegram that 21 people had been rescued from the rubble of a four-story apartment block and that search and rescue operations were continuing.