Vladimir Putin on Saturday afternoon signed a decree strengthening the security of the Kerch Bridge and energy infrastructure between Crimea and Russia after the explosion that paralyzed the heavily guarded bridge. Russia’s federal security service, the FSB, is in charge of the effort. On Saturday evening, Russia said the rail link across the bridge was back in operation, but road traffic would remain restricted.
An adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the blast that severely damaged Russia’s road and rail bridge in Crimea was just “the beginning.” Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter: “Everything that is illegal must be destroyed, everything that is stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything that is occupied by Russia must be expelled.” Three people were killed on Saturday after a truck bomb caused a fire and the collapse of a section of the Kerch bridge, Russian authorities said.
Russian troops fighting in southern Ukraine’s Mykolaiv, Kryvyi Rih and Zaporizhzhia regions could receive all the supplies they needed through existing land and sea corridors, Russia’s defense ministry said after the explosion of the Kerch bridge. The road-rail bridge has been used to bring Russian personnel and military supplies across the peninsula to other parts of southern Ukraine.
Bombings in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia have killed at least 17 people, city official Anatoliy Kurtev said. Anton Gerashchenko, a senior presidential adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said preliminary figures suggested 17 dead and 40 wounded after the attack on residential homes in southeastern Ukraine. “The Russians are not able to respond on the battlefield, so they hit the cities behind,” he said.
The parliamentary leader of Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s party has stopped short of claiming that Kyiv was responsible for the Kerch bridge explosion, but appears to have issued it as a result of Moscow’s takeover of Crimea and attempts to integrate the peninsula with the Russian mainland. “Russian illegal construction is starting to collapse and catch fire,” wrote David Arakhamia on Telegram. “The reason is simple: if you build something explosive, sooner or later it will explode.”
Russia has appointed a new top commander of Russian forces in Ukraine. Sergei Surovikin is a notorious general who opened fire on pro-democracy protesters in the 1990s. He led the Russian military expedition to Syria in 2017, where he was accused of using “controversial” tactics, including indiscriminate bombing of anti-government fighters.
Zelenskiy said Ukrainian troops were involved in “very heavy fighting” near Bakhmut, a strategically important eastern city that Russia is trying to take. Reuters reported that while Ukrainian troops had retaken thousands of square kilometers of land in recent offensives in the east and south, officials say progress is likely to slow once Kyiv’s forces encounter resistance more determined Zelenskiy said in his evening speech: “We are holding our positions in the Donbas, in particular in the direction of Bakhmut, where now it is very, very difficult – to fight very hard.”
Petro Kotin, the head of Ukraine’s state nuclear company Energoatom, said the diesel generators at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant had only a limited supply of fuel. The overnight bombing knocked out power to the plant, which needs cooling to prevent a meltdown, forcing it to switch to emergency generators. The United Nations Atomic Energy Organization has renewed calls for a buffer zone at the plant, condemning the bombings as “grossly irresponsible”.
Ukraine’s GDP has shrunk by 30% in nine months, the economy ministry said on Saturday. “Among the negative factors that affected the economy, the climate and the actions of the occupants stand out,” he said.
France’s prestigious Bayeux War Correspondents’ Awards on Saturday largely honored reporting on the Ukraine conflict, with the Associated Press and Burkina Faso newspaper Sidwaya among the honorees. The photo award went to Ukrainian photographer Evgeniy Maloletka for his work with video journalist Mstyslav Chernov on the fall of Mariupol for AP.
The series of explosions that rocked Kharkiv early Saturday caused a fire at one of the city’s medical institutions, the mayor of the eastern Ukrainian city said. Ihor Terekhov said on Telegram that the explosions were the result of missile attacks on the city center, the Associated Press reported. They also started a fire in a non-residential building.
Germany’s defense minister has told NATO it must do more to bolster security, warning: “We cannot tell how far Putin’s delusions of grandeur can go.” Christine Lambrecht said Germany had heard of Russian threats to Lithuania to implement EU sanctions and that they should be taken seriously and be prepared, Reuters reported.
Britain has rejected Moscow’s call for a secret vote in the UN general assembly next week on whether to condemn Russia’s decision to annex four regions from Ukraine and has called on the 193-member body vote publicly The general assembly is due to vote on a draft resolution that would condemn Russia’s “so-called illegal referendums” and “attempted illegal annexation”.