Moscow announced on Saturday that a truck explosion started a massive fire and severely damaged Kerch’s main bridge — built as Russia’s only land link with annexed Crimea — and vowed to find the culprits without immediately blaming Ukraine.
Russia said the blast set fire to seven oil tankers being transported by train and collapsed two autobahns of the massive road and rail structure.
Dramatic images from social media showed the bridge on fire with parts plunging into the water.
“Today at 6:07 a.m. (0307 GMT) on the road traffic side of the Crimean Bridge … a car bomb exploded, setting fire to seven oil tankers being transported by rail to Crimea,” Russian news agencies quoted the national anti-trust agency as saying. terrorism commission says.
Inaugurated in person by President Vladimir Putin in 2018, the bridge is an essential transport link for carrying military equipment to Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine.
It is hugely important to the Kremlin and Moscow had maintained that the bridge crossing was safe despite the fighting.
Ukraine’s presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, previously posted a photo of a long section of the bridge half under water on Twitter.
“The Crimea, the bridge, the beginning,” he wrote.
“Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled.”
The Ukrainian Post Office announced that it was in the process of printing stamps bearing the “Crimea Bridge – or rather, what’s left of it”.
The Kremlin spokesman said Putin had ordered the creation of a commission to investigate the explosion, Russian news agencies reported.
Russia’s powerful Commission of Inquiry opened a criminal investigation into the explosion and dispatched detectives to the scene.
It said a truck exploded “on the car section of the Crimean Bridge from the side of the Taman Peninsula”.
This “ignited seven fuel tanks on a train bound for the Crimean peninsula. As a result, two lanes partially collapsed.”
Moscow officials stopped blaming Kiev.
But an official in Russia-installed Crimea pointed the finger at “Ukrainian vandals.” Another in the neighboring Kherson region said repairs could “take up to two months.”
And the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said Kiev’s response to the blast showed its “terrorist nature.”
– ‘Hidden terrorist war’ –
“There is an undisguised terrorist war against us,” Oleg Morozov, deputy of the Russian ruling party, told the RIA Novosti news agency.
“If we remain silent and do not give an adequate response, such attacks will multiply,” he said.
There have been several explosions at Russian military installations in the Crimean peninsula.
If it is determined that Ukraine was behind the latest explosion, alarm bells could go off with the bridge so far from the front line.
The explosions come after Ukraine’s recent lightning territorial gains to the east and south that have undermined the Kremlin’s claim that it annexed Donetsk, neighboring Lugansk and the southern regions of Zaporizhia and Kherson.
The Moscow-installed head of the peninsula, Sergei Aksyonov, called on Crimea to “keep calm” as authorities appeared to downplay the explosions.
“I call on everyone to intervene and not spread fake information,” he said on Telegram. “The situation is under control, professionals are working on the ground.”
He said train connections to Russia had been cut and added that authorities had set up food and heating points to help stranded drivers.
Authorities also tried to calm fears of food and fuel shortages in Crimea, which has been completely dependent on mainland Russia since Moscow annexed it in 2014.
The Russian Ministry of Transport said a ferry service has been launched. The Department of Energy told agencies that the peninsula is fully fueled.
The explosions came a day after President Vladimir Putin’s 70th birthday.
– Some Russian winnings –
Russian troops on Friday said they had captured ground in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, their first claim to new gains since a counter-offensive in Kiev disrupted Moscow’s war effort.
Separatist forces in the war-ravaged Donetsk region said they had recaptured a series of villages near the Ukrainian-controlled industrial city of Bakhmut, which has been under Russian shelling for weeks.
The Donetsk region, which for years has been partially controlled by Kremlin-backed separatists, is a major prize for Russian troops, who sent troops to Ukraine in February.
But Kiev’s forces have pushed back against Russian soldiers across the south and east front lines, including parts of Donetsk, in recent weeks.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said late Friday that his forces had recaptured nearly 2,500 square kilometers (965 square miles) in the counteroffensive that began late last month.
Zelensky has urged to punish Russia in other areas and urged Brussels to step up pressure on its energy sector – a day after the EU imposed a new round of sanctions on Moscow.
In the more than seven months since the Russian offensive, Putin has made thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons.
US President Joe Biden warned on Thursday that the world is facing “Armageddon” as Putin could use his nuclear arsenal.
But by Friday, the White House turned the alarm back, saying the president’s comments did not reflect any new information.
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