“There is no doubt that the attack was aimed at destroying critical civilian infrastructure of the Russian Federation,” Putin stated in a video launched by the Kremlin. The 12-mile lengthy span, whereas utilized by civilians, can also be an important army logistics route for Russia’s armed forces, the one direct highway and rail route from mainland Russia to Crimea.
The incident despatched shock waves throughout the area, puncturing Kremlin assurances in regards to the bridge’s invincibility and compounding the challenges Russia faces in holding again a Ukrainian counteroffensive that has recovered occupied areas within the nation’s south and east.
While Russian officers stated that restricted highway and rail visitors would proceed, substantial injury to the bridge posed a direct logistics problem for Moscow’s army offensive. Putin personally inaugurated the bridge in 2018, in a step designed to solidify Russia’s grip on the peninsula, which it illegally annexed in 2014.
While the Ukrainian authorities didn’t publicly declare accountability for the incident, officers in Kyiv sought to make use of the blast as proof of its capability to attain a battlefield victory in opposition to Russia’s bigger, better-armed army, a prospect dismissed by many Western officers only some months in the past.
A Ukrainian official advised The Washington Post on Saturday that Ukraine’s particular providers had been behind the explosion, which Russian authorities stated came about when a truck exploded, igniting gasoline tanks on a passing prepare.
Speaking within the video with Putin, Alexander Bastrykin, the pinnacle of Russia’s Investigative Committee, stated the truck within the incident, which he stated additionally concerned Russian and different nationals, got here from Bulgaria by Georgia and into Russia earlier than being pushed towards Crimea.
Ukrainian officers dismissed the Russian statements, as a substitute condemning Russia for in a single day missile strikes that authorities stated killed no less than 14 individuals and injured no less than 70, together with 11 youngsters, within the Ukrainian metropolis of Zaporizhzhia. After the attack, officers posted images of {a partially} destroyed condominium constructing, the place the central part had collapsed right into a pile of rubble.
“Putin accuses Ukraine of terrorism? Sounds too cynical even for Russia,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said on Twitter. “There is only one terrorist state here and the whole world knows who it is.”
Russia has repeatedly struck civilian targets since its Feb. 24 invasion, together with hospitals, faculties, condominium buildings and railway stations.
In Zaporizhzhia, no less than eight individuals had been pulled from the particles after the attack, Oleksandr Starukh, governor of the Zaporizhzhia area, stated Sunday.
While rescuers labored to clear the particles the next evening, one other airstrike devastated the realm, Starukh stated. About 2 a.m. Monday native time, Starukh warned people in Zaporizhzhia to take cowl due to an incoming airstrike, based on his Telegram account. About an hour later, he said a residential constructing had been destroyed.
The destruction highlighted the potential for Russian retaliation for the bridge incident, and the continuing vulnerability of Ukrainian cities regardless of the large shipments of weapons supplied by the United States and European nations in current months.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba stated the Zaporizhzhia attack supplied additional proof that Ukraine’s backers ought to accelerate that supply. “We urgently need more modern air and missile defense systems to save innocent lives,” he stated on Twitter.
Officials in Kyiv hope that the bridge incident, no matter its trigger, will present extra gasoline to their marketing campaign to draw expanded assist from the West, together with longer-range missiles and tanks, and in flip persuade Russian troops and the Russian public that the struggle is a misplaced trigger.
Simon Schlegel, a Ukraine professional with the International Crisis Group, stated freeway routes throughout Russian-controlled territory to the strategic metropolis of Kherson, which Russian is predicted to defend zealously, weren’t a perfect alternative for the Crimean bridge as a result of they’re nearer to Ukrainian army positions.
Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian protection minister who now serves as an adviser to the Zelensky authorities, stated the psychological influence of the bridge incident could also be better than even the ensuing logistical challenges for Russia.
“It destroys the trust from the Russian military, the Russian government and even generally Russian people in their inability to manage risks and inability to protect,” he stated. “And that is hugely important.”
Michael Carpenter, U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, referred to as the Zaporizhzhia attack “barbaric. … We’ll have to keep reaching deeper,” he stated on Twitter. “More military assistance, more aid, more sanctions.”
Russian authorities sought to telegraph normalcy following the bridge blast, regardless of what seemed to be severe injury to the construction.
In a message on his Telegram channel, Sergei Aksyonov, head of the Crimea area, showed a photo of an undisturbed part of the bridge and stated that officers had been working to regularize transport between Crimea and Russia’s Krasnodar area. He stated regular railway providers had resumed however that solely vehicles had been passing on the bridge for now, whereas buses and heavy autos had been touring by ferry.
Russia’s transport ministry reported on Sunday that passenger and freight trains had been working frequently throughout the bridge by Sunday morning. It stated commuter rail service would resume that night, based on Interfax.
It was not clear whether or not truck-borne explosives or one thing else prompted the incident.
Baza, a Russian information outlet that continuously experiences leaked data, said on its Telegram channel that the motive force of the truck the Russian authorities stated exploded on the bridge had been contracted to ship a cargo cargo to Simferopol, a metropolis in Crimea. The driver was speculated to be paid 48,000 rubles, or about $770, Baza reported.
He was contracted on Oct. 6 and loaded the cargo within the Russian metropolis of Armavir on Oct. 7, stopping to sleep simply earlier than the bridge and heading on early the following morning, it stated.
“He told his family about it, after the call he turned off his phone,” Baza stated. Video posted by a Russian state newspaper confirmed the explosion occurring at 6:03 a.m., when few autos had been touring on the bridge.
Officials in St. Petersburg named the 2 different individuals authorities stated had been killed within the explosion as Eduard Chuchakin and Zoya Sofronova, a married couple who labored as historians and documentarians. Authorities stated their automotive was driving close to the truck that exploded.
The attack may additionally intensify inner strain that Putin is going through over battlefield setbacks. The Russian chief is because of maintain a Security Council assembly on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated.
Already, outstanding Russians are urging reprisal, together with lawmakers and media figures similar to Margarita Simonyan, editor in chief of state-owned channel RT. After the blast, she asked in a tweet: “And?”
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, referred to as for a forceful response.
“Russia’s response to this crime can only be the direct destruction of the terrorists. The way it is generally done in the world,” he stated in an interview with journalist Nadana Friedrichson, which was revealed on her Telegram channel. “This is what the citizens of Russia are waiting for.”
Isabelle Khurhudyan in Kryvyi Rih, Kostiantyn Khudov in Kyiv and John Hudson in Washington contributed to this report.
