Explosion collapses portions of bridge connecting Russia and Crimea in blow to Putin
An explosion collapsed major portions of a bridge connecting Crimea with the Russia mainland, marking a huge blow to President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine.
At least three people were killed in the explosion, including a man and woman driving across the bridge at the time, Russian officials said. No details were provided about the third victim.
While the roadway is still navigable, the blast early Saturday downed parts of the Kerch Strait road and rail bridge, which Putin opened himself in 2018. In the years since, Ukrainian officials have threatened to destroy it.
The 12 mile-stretch, a $3.6 billion project and Europe’s longest bridge, looms as a symbol of Putin’s tangible hold over the region. It is also the only link between the Crimean peninsula and Russia.
Black smoke billows from a fire on the Kerch bridge that links Crimea to Russia, after a truck exploded, near Kerch, on October 8, 2022. (-/)
Russia forcibly annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, much like the illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions this year.
The speaker of Crimea’s Kremlin-backed regional parliament immediately accused Ukraine of being behind the explosion. Some celebrated its destruction, but Kyiv stopped short of claiming responsibility. Leonid Slutsky, head of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of Russian parliament, said “consequences will be imminent” if Ukraine is, in fact, behind the blast.
Lawmakers in Russia have also called for Putin to declare a “counterterrorism operation” in response to the bridge bombing.
Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee said a truck bomb caused seven railway cars carrying fuel to catch fire, resulting in a “partial collapse of two sections of the bridge.” Putin has since ordered a “government commission” to examine the Kerch bridge “emergency” in Crimea, according to Russian state media TASS. He also signed a decree tightening security for the bridge and for energy infrastructure between Crimea and Russia, as well as put Russia’s federal security service, the FSB, in charge of the effort.
Surveillance cameras along the bridge captured the moment the explosion occurred, with two vehicles, a truck and a car at the center of the blast. It shows flames entirely overtake portions of the roadway, chunks of which plummeted into the waters below.
Train and automobile traffic over the bridge was temporarily suspended, but it has since resumed on one of the two remaining links, with the flow alternating in each direction, said Crimea’s Russia-backed leader, Sergey Aksyonov.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy indirectly acknowledged the blast in a video statement, but did not address the cause.
“Today was a good and mostly sunny day on the territory of our state,” he said. “Unfortunately, it was cloudy in Crimea. Although it is also warm.”
Zelenskyy added that Ukraine wants a future “without occupiers. Throughout our territory, in particular in Crimea.”
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.
Experts say the blast will have ramifications for Russia’s morale.
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.”
A helicopter drops water to stop fire on Crimean Bridge connecting Russian mainland and Crimean peninsula over the Kerch Strait, in Kerch, Saturday, Oct. 8, 2022.
In wake of the explosion, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced that the air force chief, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, would be the commander of all Russian troops fighting in Ukraine. It marked the first official appointment of a single commander for the entire Russian force in Ukraine.
Surovikin was previously placed in charge of Russian troops in southern Ukraine.
The explosion also comes a day after Putin’s 70th birthday.
Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, tweeted a video with the Kerch Bridge on fire along with a clip of Marilyn Monroe’s famous rendition of “Happy Birthday Mr. President.”
With News Wire Services
