An explosion tore through Russia’s bridge across the Kerch Strait to Crimea early Saturday, severely damaging it in a major blow to Vladimir Putin more than seven months after his invasion of Ukraine.
Russia’s anti-terrorist committee said a truck exploded on the roadside of the bridge early Saturday morning, igniting seven fuel tanks on the adjacent railway bridge.
Putin, Russia’s president, ordered senior officials and security agencies to investigate the explosion, which sent huge plumes of smoke into the sky as a wildfire caused two stretches of highway to collapse of the bridge and burned part of the railway.
The apparent attack is another humiliation for Russia as its invasion of Ukraine, originally designed to capture Kyiv in a matter of days, continues to struggle.
The bridge is an important conduit for supplying Russia’s war effort in southeastern Ukraine, where its troops have made a substantial withdrawal over the past week from territory Putin claimed as Russian after annexing se four regions of Ukraine.
Putin had sought to up the ante in Ukraine after a series of battlefield setbacks by claiming the territories as Russian soil, allowing him to reframe the invasion as a defensive war, justifying the mobilization of the reserves of the ‘army and increasing the threat that Russia could use nuclear. weapons if Ukraine tried to retake the regions.
Instead, the quagmire has only deepened. Many Russians have fled to Kazakhstan to avoid military service, while Ukraine continues to advance east and south, prompting rare public criticism of Moscow’s military by some Russian officials and on state television.
The 12-mile bridge was conceived when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and was completed in 2018. It’s an engineering feat: the Wehrmacht and the Red Army tried and failed to cross the waters between the peninsula and the Russian mainland in the second world. war, and has become a symbol of Russian prestige.
Putin opened the bridge in 2018 when he drove a truck across it along with fellow children’s judo coach Arkady Rotenberg, the billionaire who commissioned its construction.
It is a key artery for maritime transport, spanning routes connecting the export ports of the Sea of Azov with the Black Sea.
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Ukrainian officials did not immediately claim responsibility for the attack, but praised the collapse of the bridge.
“Crimea, the bridge, the beginning,” tweeted Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as he posted a picture of the bridge sinking into the sea.
“Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled.”
Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, tweeted two images of a bridge, the first showing it under the stars in the evening and the second showing it surrounded by clouds.
Oleksiy Danilov, Zelenskyy’s national security chief, tweeted a video of the blown bridge along with a video of Marilyn Monroe singing happy birthday to then US President John F. Kennedy in 1962. Friday was Putin’s 70th birthday.
Ukraine’s defense ministry, military intelligence and a spokesman for Zelenskyy declined to comment.
Numerous key infrastructure and military targets in western Russia and Crimea have been hit by explosions since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February.
Kyiv has yet to formally claim responsibility for the attacks, but scoffed at Russia’s attempts to reassure the population by blaming the explosions on mundane causes such as gas leaks.
Images shared on social media showed flames engulfing a section of the bridge and smoke billowing over the water.
Dashboard camera footage appeared to capture the moment of the explosion, showing some passenger vehicles were traveling on the road when it happened. The FT has been unable to verify the images.
Other images appeared to show structural damage to the bridge. Some images appeared to show parts of the highway submerged in the strait.
Russian officials said they had extinguished the fire and closed the bridge to rail and road traffic.
Russian investigators said three people were killed in the apparent attack. They claimed that the people were in a car that was passing in front of the truck when it exploded. The truck belonged to a resident of the nearby Russian province of Krasnodar, investigators said, adding that they had begun searching the person’s home.
Dmitri Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, said it was too early to say how long it would take Russia to rebuild the bridge.