Counteroffensive: Resurgent, Ukraine blows key Russian bridge to Crimea
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: A day after President Vladimir Putin celebrated his 70th birthday, Russia faced an acute embarrassment. “Today at 6:07 am (0307 GMT) on the road traffic side of the Crimean bridge … a car bomb exploded, setting fire to seven oil tankers being carried by rail to Crimea,” Russian media outlets said on Saturday, citing the national anti-terrorism committee, but without immediately blaming Ukraine.
While Russia downplayed the incident, Ukraine owned the blast.
Ukraine’s presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, tweeted a picture of a long section of the bridge half-submerged.
“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 it was preparing to print stamps showing the “Crimean bridge – or more precisely, what remains of it”.
President Vladimir Putin had inaugurated the Kerch Bridge in 2018 as the sole link to the peninsula that Moscow annexed in 2014. It is a vital transport link for carrying military equipment to Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine and is hugely important to the Kremlin. Moscow had maintained the bridge crossing was safe despite the fighting. The Crimean Peninsula is entirely reliant on the Russian mainland for food and fuel.
This massive blow may further escalate the Russian invasion, which has cost Moscow the Moon since it invaded Ukraine on February 24 this year.
Moscow announced that a truck explosion ignited a huge fire and severely damaged the key Kerch Bridge and vowed to find the perpetrators without immediately blaming Ukraine.
Russia said the blast set ablaze seven oil tankers transported by train and collapsed two car lanes of the giant road and rail structure. Social media footage showed the bridge on fire with parts plunging into the water.
President Putin ordered an investigative committee to open a criminal probe into the explosion and sent detectives to the scene.
The media reported a truck exploded “on the automobile part of the Crimean bridge from the side of the Taman Peninsula”. This “caused seven fuel tanks to ignite on a train heading towards the Crimea Peninsula. As a result, two lanes partially collapsed.”
A Russian official in Crimea blamed the “Ukrainian vandals.” Another in the neighboring Kherson region said repairs could “take two months”. The spokeswoman of Russia’s foreign ministry said that Kyiv’s reaction to the blasts showed its “terrorist nature.”
“There is an undisguised terrorist war against us,” Russian ruling party deputy Oleg Morozov said, adding, “If we stay quiet and do not give an adequate response, then such attacks will multiply.”
During the last few weeks, several Russian military installations in the Crimean Peninsula have reported explosions.
The blasts came after Ukraine’s recent lightning territorial gains in the east and south that undermined the Kremlin’s claim that it annexed Donetsk, neighboring Lugansk, and the southern regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
The Moscow-installed head of the peninsula, Sergey Aksyonov, said rail links to Russia had been halted and authorities had set up food and heating points to help stranded drivers.
The Ukrainian forces have in recent weeks been pushing back against Russian soldiers across the front lines in the south and in the east, including in parts of Donetsk.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said late Friday his forces had recaptured nearly 2,500 square kilometers (965 square miles) in the counter-offensive that began late last month.
