A major explosion destroyed part of the Crimean Bridge early Saturday morning, making it one of President Putin’s most important showpieces. The 19-kilometer-long bridge, the longest in Europe, connects Crimea, annexed in 2014, to the Russian mainland across the Kerch Strait. In Ukraine, the attack on the Crimean Bridge is celebrated as a major symbolic victory.
Images on social media show how the explosion sends a conflagration and a column of black smoke over the two-lane highway and the adjacent railway bridge. Seven wagons of a train with fuel traveling over the bridge towards Crimea are said to have caught fire. The fire has now been extinguished.
Video images taken by bystanders show how part of the highway has been swept away and sunk into the sea. There was little traffic on the bridge at the time of the explosion, 6 a.m. local time. According to the Russian authorities, three people have been killed.
Sergei Aksjonov, the Russian-appointed head of Crimea, confirmed that two pillars under the bridge have collapsed, but Russian state media said the construction of the bridge itself was not damaged enough to cause the bridge to collapse. The local authorities said they would set up a ferry connection and spoke of sufficient fuel and food supplies on the peninsula.
Putin orders investigation
There is much speculation about the exact cause of the explosion and whether it is a Ukrainian attack. Russia says the explosion was caused by a ‘car bomb’ reads a statement of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee of Russia. The bomb is said to have been hidden in a truck. Russian President Putin had a special commission set up in the morning to investigate the cause, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said. The commission consists of several Russian ministers and government bodies and the heads of Crimea and the Krasnodar region.
The Russian state newspaper Rossijskaja Gazeta reported based on an anonymous law enforcement source that the force of the explosion would be several tons of TNT. “It is not yet known whether the truck was remotely detonated or whether it was a suicide attack,” the newspaper said. In addition, the paper said it is unclear how a truck loaded with explosives “was able to get through state-of-the-art inspection systems, which react not only to explosives, but even to their tracks.”
Although the Ukrainian government has not yet immediately claimed responsibility, triumphant sounds were heard in Kiev. “Sick burn,” read the text that appeared on the official Twitter account of the Ukrainian government. “Everything that is illegal must be destroyed, everything that has been stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything that Russia has occupied must be liberated,” wrote Zelensky’s advisor Michailo Podoljak on Twitter. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense made the link with the Russian warship ‘Moskva’, which was sunk by Ukraine in the Black Sea in April. Maria Zakharova, spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, calls the playful reports a “sign of the terrorist nature of the regime in Kiev”.
Showpiece
The imposing Crimean Bridge is regarded as President Putin’s showpiece and a symbol of Putin’s dreamed-up Russian ‘resurrection’ as a political superpower. The bridge, which cost the Russian treasury some 3 billion euros and was opened in May 2018, is crucial not only for the viability of the 2.4 million inhabitants peninsula as part of Russia, but also for supplying the Russian troops in Ukraine and for the navy, which controls the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov from the port of Sevastopol. The planned Russian invasion of Ukraine began last year with a military build-up of Crimea.
It is precisely this crucial significance that has made the bridge one of Russia’s most vulnerable and strategically interesting targets for Ukraine for months. Russia has maintained in recent months that the bridge is safe, despite fighting in mainland Ukraine and explosions from military installations on the peninsula. So the big question is how President Putin, who celebrated his 70th birthday just on Friday, will react to the most painful defeat since the start of his ‘special operation’ in Ukraine. Earlier, Russian officials said an attack on the bridge would herald terrible repercussions.
moral boost
It remains to be seen how great the impact of the devastation will be for the further course of the conflict in Ukraine. It is certain that the (temporary) elimination of the bridge is the next strategic and moral boost for the Ukrainian army in a series of triumphs on the battlefield. Fierce fighting is currently going on around the highly strategic Kherson region, one of the four Ukrainian regions recently annexed by Putin.
Russia will have more trouble resupplying troops in the south in the near future, especially as Ukraine’s advances make the increasingly longer supply lines in the Donbas more vulnerable by the day. In addition, the alleged attack will further fuel growing dissatisfaction with the disastrous course of Putin’s ‘military operation’ and the performance of his Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
Russian state media pay close attention to the explosion, but try to avoid panic. News site Meduza claims they received instructions from the Kremlin to emphasize to the public that the bridge has not been “destroyed”, but only “damaged” and repair work has already started. As a popular holiday destination, Crimea attracts millions of Russian tourists every year. The governor of the region announced on Saturday that fuel and petrol are being rationed in Crimea.