The Crimean Bridge, a key and symbolic infrastructure linking Russia to the peninsula annexed in 2014 to the detriment of Ukraine, was partially destroyed on Saturday by a huge explosion attributed by Moscow to a truck bomb.
After appearing in a tongue-in-cheek tweet on Saturday morning to half-acknowledge a Ukrainian attack, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podoliak later referred to a “Russian lead”, arguing that the explosion was the result of an internal struggle between the FSB (Russian special services) and the Russian military.
CCTV footage shared on social media showed a powerful explosion as several vehicles drove across the bridge, including a truck that Russian authorities suspect was the source of the blast. On other shots, we can see a convoy of tank cars in flames on the railway part of the bridge, and two spans of one of the two collapsed road lanes.
Investigators say the early morning attack left three people dead: the driver of the truck and two people – a man and a woman – who were in a nearby car when the explosion took place and whose bodies were taken out waters.
Crimean authorities announced in the afternoon that traffic had resumed for cars and buses on the bridge’s only road lane that remained intact. Heavy goods vehicles will now make the crossing on ferries. Rail traffic was to be restored in the evening, and a line operator said two trains had started bound for Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The Investigative Committee said it had established the identity of the owner of the truck bomb, a resident of the Krasnodar region in southern Russia, and that investigations were underway.
This concrete 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.
“Terrorist Nature”
“Crimea. The bridge. The beginning. Everything that is illegal must be destroyed, everything that has been stolen must be returned to Ukraine,” Mikhaïlo Podoliak, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, commented on Twitter in the morning.
In a statement issued later by the presidency, however, he attributed the explosion to an internal struggle between the FSB and the Russian army.
“It should be noted that the truck that exploded, by all indications, entered the bridge from the Russian side. It is therefore in Russia that we must look for the answers […] all of this clearly points to a Russian track,” he said.
The spokeswoman for Russian diplomacy, Maria Zakharova, considered, however, that the reactions in kyiv showed 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.
If Moscow has for the moment been careful not to accuse Ukraine directly, the head of the regional parliament installed by Russia, Vladimir Konstantinov denounced a coup “of the Ukrainian vandals”.
The leader of the peninsula, Sergei Aksionov tried to reassure him by saying that Crimea had reserves of fuel for one month and food for two months.
According to an official of the Russian occupation in the Ukrainian region of Kherson, neighboring Crimea, Kirill Stremoussov, the repairs could take “two months”.
New commander
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 a galvanized Ukrainian army strong in Western arms supplies, Vladimir Putin decreed at the end of September the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of reservists and the annexation of four Ukrainian regions although Moscow only partially controls them.
The only battlefield where Russian forces currently have the advantage is around the city of Bakhmout in eastern Ukraine.
A sign of discontent in high places over the conduct of operations, Moscow announced on Saturday that it had appointed a new man at the head of its “special military operation” in Ukraine, General Sergei Surovikin, 55.
Finally, the Zaporijjia nuclear power plant, at the center of a showdown for months in southern Ukraine, which required its shutdown, again lost its external power source due to bombardments and relies on emergency generators, alerted Saturday the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) whose mission is on site.