Putin taunted as he cops another blow
Vladimir Putin has been dealt a powerful symbolic and strategic blow when a bridge he built linking the annexed Crimean peninsula to Russia was blown up in a massive explosion ignited by a truck bomb.
Three people were killed when parts of the Kerch bridge collapsed and plunged into the water in an attack thought to have been masterminded by Ukrainian special forces and which sparked jubilation in Kyiv.
It’s a hammer blow to Putin’s increasingly fragile hold on parts of Ukraine and will hinder the transfer of troops and supplies from Crimea to the front line in south and east Ukraine.
But it has raised fears of retaliation by Putin, who has come under pressure in recent days from hardliners urging him to strike Ukraine with tactical nuclear weapons after a string of humiliating military defeats.
The Russian leader personally opened the $5.6 billion 19km bridge in 2018, four years after he seized Crimea.
But it was engulfed in a fireball on Saturday (local time) and at least two of its concrete spans collapsed when an explosion set fire to seven oil tankers being carried on a freight train.
Russia said the bomb was placed in the truck which came from its side of the bridge. The Russian truck driver was killed and the bodies of two other people were found in the water. His home in Russia was being searched.
Ukrainians celebrated and taunted Putin over the blast, which came the day after the Russian president celebrated his 70th birthday in St Petersburg with the leaders of former Soviet republics. Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security council, tweeted footage of the burning bridge next to video of Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy birthday, Mr President”.
The Ukrainian post office announced it was preparing to print stamps showing the “Crimean bridge - or, more precisely, what remains of it”.
A local pro-Russian official predicted it could take two months to repair the damaged sections, although there were reports late on Saturday that some cars and trains had begun to use the bridge again.
The explosion is a serious embarrassment for Putin, who saw the structure, the longest bridge in Europe, as embodying the permanence of the peninsula’s annexation.
“Its partial or total destruction symbolises Ukraine’s growing ascendancy over Russia,” said James Nixey, Russia expert from UK think tank Chatham House.
The blast also appeared to provide further proof of Kyiv’s ability to strike deep in enemy territory. In recent weeks a Russian airbase in Crimea and military targets in Belgorod, on the Russia mainland, have been struck.
The Ukrainska Pravda newspaper claimed the SBU, Ukraine’s security service, was responsible but the SBU declined to comment. “Crimea, the bridge, the beginning,” tweeted Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Kremlin did not formally blame Kyiv for the attack, perhaps out of reluctance to admit it had failed to prevent a strike on what it consider its land. But Vladimir Konstantinov, the head of the parliament in occupied Crimea, blamed “Ukrainian vandals” for the destruction.
Zelensky made no direct mention of it in his nightly address, and officials made no claim of responsibility.