Blast damages only bridge between Russia and annexed Crimea

Moscow announced Saturday that a truck exploded igniting a huge fire and damaging the key Kerch bridge —built as Russia’s sole land link with annexed Crimea — and vowed to find the perpetrators, without immediately blaming Ukraine.

Russia said the blast set ablaze seven oil tankers being transported by train and collapsed two car lanes of the giant road and rail structure.

Dramatic social media footage showed the bridge on fire with parts plunging into the sea.

“Today at 6:07am (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 news agencies cited the national anti-terrorism committee as saying.

The bridge, personally inaugurated by President Vladimir Putin in 2018, is a vital transport link for carrying military equipment to Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine.

Moscow had maintained the bridge crossing was safe despite the fighting.

The Kremlin spokesman said Putin had ordered a commission to be set up to look into the blast, Russian news agencies reported.

Russia’s powerful investigative committee opened a criminal probe into the explosion and sent detectives to the scene.

It said 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.”

While officials in Moscow stopped short of blaming Kyiv, an official in Russian-installed Crimea pointed the finger at “Ukrainian vandals”.

Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the head of the office of Ukraine’s presidency, took to Twitter posting a picture of a long section of the bridge half-submerged in the waters.

“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.”

There have been several explosions at Russian military installations in the Crimean peninsula and if it is established that Ukraine was behind the latest blast, alarm bells may sound with the bridge so far from the front line.

The blasts come after Ukraine’s recent lightning territorial gains in the east and south that have undermined the Kremlin’s claim that it annexed Donetsk, neighbouring Lugansk and the southern regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

Russian forces said Friday they had captured ground in Donetsk in east Ukraine, their first claim of new gains since a Kyiv counter-offensive rattled Moscow’s war effort.

The announcement came as Russia’s Orthodox leader said President Vladimir Putin’s rule had been mandated by God, congratulating him on his 70th birthday, and as the Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize to rights defenders in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.