Bridge blast leaves Russia wounded
Partial collapse of key route to Crimea also met with fury
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 a towering 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 assign blame. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly threatened to strike the bridge, but Kyiv stopped short of claiming responsibility.
The explosion, which Russian authorities said was caused by a truck bomb, risked a sharp escalation in the war, with some Russian lawmakers calling for President Vladimir Putin to declare a “counterterrorism operation.” Putin signed a decree late Saturday tightening security for the bridge and for energy infrastructure between Crimea and Russia, and put Russia’s federal security service in charge of the effort.
Hours after the explosion, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced that Gen. Sergei Surovikin would command all Russian troops in Ukraine.
Surovikin, who this summer was placed in charge of troops in southern Ukraine, had led Russian forces in Syria and was accused of overseeing a bombardment that destroyed much of Aleppo.
The 12-mile Kerch Bridge,
on a strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, is a symbol of Moscow’s claims on Crimea and a key link to the peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
The $3.6 billion bridge is the longest in Europe and vital to Russia’s military operations in southern Ukraine. Putin presided over its 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.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a video address, indirectly acknowledged
the bridge attack but did not address its cause.
“Today was not a bad day and mostly sunny on our state’s territory,” he said. “Unfortunately, it was cloudy in Crimea. Although it was also warm.”
Russia’s National AntiTerrorism 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 couple 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 checks for explosives. The truck that exploded was owned by a resident of the Krasnodar
region in southern Russia, the committee said, adding that 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, with the flow alternating in each direction, said Crimea’s Russia-backed leader, Sergey Aksyonov.
Rail traffic was resuming slowly. Two passenger trains left the Crimean cities of Sevastopol and Simferopol and headed toward the bridge Saturday evening. Passenger ferry links between Crimea and the Russian mainland were being relaunched Sunday.
While Russia seized areas north of Crimea early in its invasion of Ukraine and built a land corridor to it along the Sea of Azov, Ukraine is pressing a counteroffensive.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its troops in the south were receiving necessary supplies through that corridor and by sea.
Russian war bloggers responded to the attack with fury, urging Moscow to strike Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. Putin ordered the creation of a government panel to deal with the emergency. Gennady Zyuganov, head of the Russian Communist Party, said the “terror attack” should serve as a wake-up call.
“The special operation must be turned into a counterterrorist operation,” he declared.
Leonid Slutsky, head of the foreign affairs committee in the Russian parliament’s lower house, said “consequences will be imminent” if Ukraine was responsible.
The Ukrainian postal service announced it would issue stamps commemorating the blast, as it did after the sinking of the Moskva, a Russian flagship cruiser, by a Ukrainian strike.
Elsewhere, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant lost its last remaining external power source as a result of renewed shelling and is relying on emergency diesel generators.