New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Explosion damages bridge to Crimea, hurts Russia supply line
KYIV, Ukraine — An explosion Saturday caused the partial collapse of a bridge linking the Crimean Peninsula with Russia, damaging an important supply artery for the Kremlin’s faltering war effort in southern Ukraine and hitting an unmistakable symbol of Russian power in the region.
Nobody immediately claimed responsibility for the blast, which killed three people. The speaker of the Russian-backed regional parliament in Crimea accused Ukraine but Moscow didn’t apportion blame. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly threatened to strike the bridge and some lauded the destruction on Saturday, but Kyiv stopped short of claiming responsibility.
The explosion, which Russian authorities was caused by a truck bomb, risked a sharp escalation in Russia’s eightmonth war, with some Russian lawmakers calling for President Vladimir Putin to declare a “counterterrorism operation” in retaliation, shedding the term “special military operation” that had downplayed the scope of fighting to ordinary Russians.
The Kremlin could use such a move to broaden the power of security agencies, ban rallies, tighten censorship, introduce restrictions on travel, and expand a partial military mobilization that Putin ordered last month.
Hours after the explosion, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced that the air force chief, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, would now command all Russian troops in Ukraine. Surovikin, who over the summer was placed in charge of troops in
southern Ukraine, had led Russian forces in Syria and was accused of overseeing a brutal bombardment that destroyed much of Aleppo.
Moscow, however, continues to suffer battlefield losses.
On Saturday, a Kremlinbacked official in Ukraine’s Kherson region announced a partial evacuation of civilians from the southern province, one of four illegally annexed by Moscow last week. Kirill Stremousov told Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti agency that young children, their parents and the elderly could be relocated to two southern Russian regions because Kherson was getting “ready for a difficult period.”
The 12-mile Kerch Bridge, on a strait that connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, is a tangible symbol of Moscow’s claims on Crimea and an essential
link to the peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The $3.6 billion bridge, the longest in Europe, is vital to sustaining Russia’s military operations in southern Ukraine. Putin presided over the bridge’s opening in 2018.
The attack on it “will have a further sapping effort on Russian morale, (and) will give an extra boost to Ukraine’s,” said James Nixey of Chatham House, a think tank in London. “Conceivably the Russians can rebuild it, but they can’t defend it while losing a war.”
Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee said a truck bomb caused seven railway cars carrying fuel to catch fire, resulting in the “partial collapse of two sections of the bridge.” A man and a woman riding in a vehicle on the
bridge were killed, Russia’s Investigative Committee said. It didn’t say who the third victim was.
All vehicles crossing the bridge are supposed to undergo state-of-the-art checks for explosives. The truck that exploded was owned by a resident of the Krasnodar region in southern Russia. Russian authorities said the man’s home was searched and experts were looking at the truck’s route.
Train and automobile traffic over the bridge was temporarily suspended. Automobile traffic resumed Saturday afternoon on one of the two links that remained intact from the blast, with the flow alternating in each direction, Crimea’s Russia-backed regional leader, Sergey Aksyonov, wrote on Telegram.