Russian divers are to examine the extent of damage caused by a powerful explosion at Russia’s road and rail bridge in Crimea, a hated symbol of Russia’s occupation and a key logistical link for Russian troops in southern Ukraine
Russian news agencies quoted Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin as saying divers would begin work at 6 a.m. (0300 GMT) on Sunday, with a more detailed survey above the waterline expected that it is complete at the end of the day.
“The situation is manageable – it’s unpleasant, but not fatal,” said Crimea’s Kremlin-installed governor, Sergei Aksyonov. “Of course, emotions have run high and there’s a healthy desire for revenge.”
Russia has already threatened retaliation for any attack on the bridge. Celebrations in Ukraine over the damage, which is likely to make it difficult for supplies and reinforcements to reach occupying troops in the south, were mixed with concern about a possible escalation.
Ukraine did not directly claim responsibility for the attack, which Russia said was carried out by a truck bomb. But a senior Ukrainian official posted a “happy birthday” message with images of destruction, and within hours the country’s post office revealed designs for a commemorative stamp showing the burning bridge, and raising questions about whether the explosion was planned.
The peninsula had one month of fuel and more than two months of food, Aksyonov said. Russia’s defense ministry said its forces in southern Ukraine could be “fully supplied” through existing land and sea routes.
On Saturday night in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, at least 17 people were killed in an overnight missile attack, a local official said on Sunday. Apartment buildings and roads in a residential area were damaged, Anatoliy Kurtev told Telegram.
Anton Gerashchenko, a senior presidential adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said 40 were injured, but that the numbers were only preliminary.
⚡️Strike in Zaporizhzhia: 17 dead and 40 injured. The figures are preliminary. There may be more victims, reports the secretary of the city council, Anatoliy Kurtev
Private houses of several apartments destroyed
the russians are not able to respond on the battlefield and so they hit the cities behind 📷📹 TRUKHA pic.twitter.com/vVbRJDMR9C
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko7) October 9, 2022
In Crimea, limited road traffic resumed about 10 hours after Saturday’s explosion, and Russia’s transport ministry authorized rail traffic to resume.
The bridge is an important artery for Russian forces who control most of the Kherson region in southern Ukraine and for the Russian naval port of Sevastopol, whose governor told locals: “Keep calm, don’t you get scared.”
Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, and the 19-kilometer (12-mile) Crimean Bridge linking the region to Russia’s transport network was opened with much fanfare four years later by President Vladimir Putin. Kyiv is demanding that Russian forces leave the Black Sea peninsula, as well as the Ukrainian territory they occupied in the invasion that Putin launched in February.
It was not yet clear whether the Kerch Bridge explosion was a deliberate attack, but the damage to such a prominent structure came amid several battlefield defeats for Russia and could further cloud the Kremlin’s assurances that the conflict will be planned.
Putin signed a decree on Saturday ordering more security for the bridge and infrastructure that supplies electricity and natural gas to Crimea and ordered an investigation.
“It’s conceivable that the Russians can rebuild it, but they can’t defend it while they’re losing a war,” said James Nixey, a political analyst at the British think tank Chatham House.
Russian officials said three people had been killed, probably the occupants of a car traveling near a truck that exploded. On the upper level of the bridge, seven fuel tank cars from a 59-car train bound for the peninsula also caught fire.
Hours after the explosion, Russia announced that it had appointed a notorious veteran with a bloody record as the first general commander of the war in Ukraine. Sergei Surovikin opened fire on pro-democracy protesters in the 1990s and led Russia’s 2017 military expedition to Syria, where he was accused of using controversial tactics, including indiscriminate bombing of anti-government fighters. His appointment may indicate that Moscow now understands that its military is in danger of collapsing in Ukraine, with Kyiv’s forces advancing in the four southern regions that Putin claims to have annexed.
Fire on the Kerch bridge after Saturday’s explosion. Photo: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy did not refer to the bridge explosion in a video address on Saturday, saying simply that the weather in Crimea was cloudy but also warm.
“But no matter how cloudy it is, Ukrainians know … our future is sunny,” he said. “This is a future without occupiers, throughout our territory, especially in Crimea.”
Zelenskiy also said, however, that Ukrainian troops were involved in very heavy fighting near Bakhmut, a strategically important city in eastern Ukraine that Russia is trying to capture.
“We are holding our positions in the Donbas, in particular in the direction of Bakhmut, where it is now very, very difficult – very hard fighting,” he said.
Since the war began in February, Ukrainian officials have regularly suggested they want to destroy the Kerch bridge. The Ukrainian postal service said it would print a special stamp.
“Undoubtedly, we are witnessing the beginning of large-scale negative processes in Russia,” Zelenskiy’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said in a statement, blaming infighting among Putin’s circle as he attributed the explosion to Russian operators.
A spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry, Maria Zakharova, said that Kyiv’s reaction to the destruction of civilian infrastructure “testifies to its terrorist nature”.
Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee said a freight truck had exploded on the bridge’s roadway at 6:07 a.m. (03:07 GMT). He said two sections of the road bridge had partially collapsed, but the arch that crosses the canal through which ships travel between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov was not damaged.
Emergencies Minister Alexander Kurenkov told Russian state news agency Tass that quick-thinking rail workers who uncoupled the burning fuel wagons had prevented the blaze from spreading.
Pictures showed half of the driveway blown away, with the other half still attached.
Moscow has portrayed the largely Russian-speaking Crimea as a historic part of Russia and, especially this year, one where its citizens could vacation.
The explosion “will not greatly affect the supply of the army,” said Kirill Stremousov, the Russian-installed deputy administrator of the Kherson region.
“But there will be problems with logistics for Crimea,” he added in a social media post.