A truck bomb killed three people and started a large fire on the Crimean Bridge, key infrastructure and symbol of the annexation of the eponymous Ukrainian peninsula, Russian authorities announced on Saturday, without immediately accusing Ukraine.
CCTV footage circulating online shows a huge explosion ripping through the bridge at night as a few vehicles drive over it. The impact seems to occur at the level of the passage of a white truck. Other pictures show the railway line in flames for tens of meters and a collapsed section of road.
Russian investigators mentioned three dead, passengers in a car that was driving near the truck at the time of the explosion. “The bodies of two victims – a man and a woman – have already been taken out of the water,” said the Investigative Committee, announcing that it had established the identity of the owner of the truck, a resident of the Krasnodar region, in southern Russia.
This bridge, built at great expense on the orders of Vladimir Putin to connect the annexed peninsula to Russian territory, is used in particular to transport military equipment from the Russian army fighting in Ukraine.
If Ukraine is behind the fire and explosion on the Crimean Bridge, the fact that such crucial infrastructure so far from the front could be damaged by Ukrainian forces would be a snub for Moscow.
“Today at 6:07 a.m. on the road part of the Crimean Bridge […] the explosion of a car bomb took place, which set fire to seven railway tanks that were going to Crimea”, indicated the Russian Anti-Terrorism Committee, according to which two roads are damaged, but the arch of the bridge is not affected. The Russian authorities then spoke of a truck.
The Kremlin spokesman told the Ria Novosti agency that Vladimir Putin had ordered the formation of a government commission to establish the facts.
Rail and road traffic have been stopped, and ferries have been set up to allow the crossing, according to Russian agencies.
“Terrorist Nature”
If Ukraine has not admitted responsibility for this attack, its officials have multiplied the mocking and ironic comments, the Ukrainian post office even announcing that it is preparing a stamp to celebrate the occasion and to have the drawing already ready.
“Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything stolen must be returned to Ukraine,” Mikhailo Podoliak, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, tweeted.
These reactions prompted the spokeswoman for Russian diplomacy, Maria Zakharova, to see it as a sign of the “terrorist nature” of the Ukrainian authorities.
The Russian army, in difficulty on the Kherson front in southern Ukraine, assured that the supply of its troops was not threatened. ” Supplies […] is carried out continuously and completely, along a land corridor and partially by sea,” she announced.
Ukraine has struck several bridges in the Kherson region in recent months to disrupt Russian supplies, as well as military bases in Crimea, attacks for which it did not admit responsibility until months later.
The head of the Crimean assembly, the regional parliament installed by Russia, Vladimir Konstantinov denounced a coup by “Ukrainian vandals”.
The leader of the peninsula, Sergei Aksionov, tried to reassure his constituents by saying that Crimea had reserves of fuel for one month and food for two months. According to him, the repair work will begin “almost today”.
According to an official of the Russian occupation in the Ukrainian region of Kherson, neighboring Crimea, Kirill Stremoussov, the repairs could take “two months”.
Serial setbacks
Russia has always maintained that the bridge is safe despite fighting in Ukraine, but has in the past threatened kyiv with reprisals if Ukrainian forces were to attack this or other infrastructure in Crimea.
Russian MP Oleg Morozov, quoted by the Ria Novosti agency, called on Saturday for an “adequate” response. “Otherwise, this type of terrorist attack will multiply,” he said.
Since early September, Russian forces have been forced to retreat at many points on the front. In particular, they were forced to withdraw from the Kharkiv region (north-east) and to retreat to that of Kherson.
Faced with these setbacks in the face of a galvanized Ukrainian army strong in Western arms supplies, President Putin decreed at the end of September the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of reservists, civilians therefore, to reverse the trend. He also decreed the annexation of four Ukrainian regions although Moscow only partially controls them.
The only battlefield where Moscow currently has the advantage is near the town of Bakhmout, in the Donetsk region (east), which Russian forces have been trying to take since August.