Crimea bridge reopens after explosion as Putin signs decree to tighten security
Who was responsible for the explosion that killed three people in Crimea? John Ray reports on the latest
Vehicle traffic has resumed on Russia's only bridge to Crimea just hours after an explosion on Saturday afternoon caused its partial collapse and killed three people.
Two passenger trains departed from the Crimean cities of Sevastopol and Simferopol and headed toward the bridge on Saturday evening. Passenger ferry links between Crimea and the Russian mainland were being relaunched on Sunday.
Russia's foreign ministry published a video on Twitter allegedly showing cars using the bridge on Saturday evening.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree late on Saturday tightening security for the Kerch Bridge and for energy infrastructure between Crimea and Russia after the explosion.
Nobody immediately claimed responsibility for the blast. The speaker of the Russian-backed regional parliament in Crimea accused Ukraine but Moscow didn’t apportion blame.
Ukrainian officials have repeatedly threatened to strike the bridge and some lauded the destruction on Saturday, but Kyiv stopped short of claiming responsibility.
The explosion, which Russian authorities was caused by a truck bomb, risked a sharp escalation in Russia’s eight-month war, with some Russian lawmakers calling for President Vladimir Putin to declare a “counterterrorism operation” in retaliation, shedding the term “special military operation” that had downplayed the scope of fighting to ordinary Russians.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a video address, indirectly acknowledged the attack on the bridge by talking about the weather in Crimea but did not address its cause.
“Today was a good and mostly sunny day on the territory of our state,” he said.
“Unfortunately, it was cloudy in Crimea."
He said Ukraine wants a future “without occupiers. Throughout our territory, in particular in Crimea.”
The Kremlin could use such a move to broaden the power of security agencies, ban rallies, tighten censorship, introduce restrictions on travel, and expand a partial military mobilisation that Putin ordered last month.
Hours after the explosion, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced that the air force chief, General Sergei Surovikin, would now command all Russian troops in Ukraine.
On Saturday, a Kremlin-backed official in Ukraine’s Kherson region announced a partial evacuation of civilians from the southern province, one of four illegally annexed by Moscow last week.
The 19-kilometre (12-mile) Kerch Bridge, on a strait that connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, is a tangible symbol of Moscow’s claims on Crimea and an essential link to the peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
The $3.6 billion bridge, the longest in Europe, is vital to sustaining Russia's military operations in southern Ukraine.
The attack on it “will have a further sapping effort on Russian morale, (and) will give an extra boost to Ukraine’s,” said James Nixey of think-tank Chatham House.
“Conceivably the Russians can rebuild it, but they can’t defend it while losing a war."
Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee said a truck bomb caused seven railway cars carrying fuel to catch fire, resulting in the “partial collapse of two sections of the bridge.”
A man and a woman riding in a vehicle on the bridge were killed, Russia’s Investigative Committee said. It didn’t say who the third victim was.
All vehicles crossing the bridge are supposed to undergo state-of-the-art checks for explosives.
The truck that exploded was owned by a resident of the Krasnodar region in southern Russia. Russian authorities said the man's home was searched and experts were looking at the truck’s route.
While Russia seized areas north of Crimea early during its invasion of Ukraine and built a land corridor to it along the Sea of Azov, Ukraine is pressing a counteroffensive to reclaim that territory.
Gennady Zyuganov, head of the Russian Communist Party, said the “terror attack” should serve as a wake-up call.
“The special operation must be turned into a counterterrorist operation,” he declared.
Leonid Slutsky, head of the foreign affairs committee in the Russian parliament’s lower house, said “consequences will be imminent” if Ukraine was responsible.
And Sergei Mironov, leader of the Just Russia faction, said Russia should respond by attacking key Ukrainian infrastructure, including power plants, bridges and railways.
Such statements may herald a decision by Putin to declare a counterterrorism operation.
The parliamentary leader of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s party stopped short of claiming that Kyiv was responsible, but cast the bridge explosion as a consequence of Moscow’s takeover of Crimea.
“Russian illegal construction is starting to fall apart and catch fire. The reason is simple: If you build something explosive, then sooner or later it will explode,” said David Arakhamia of the Servant of the People party.
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The Ukrainian postal service announced it would issue stamps commemorating the blast, as it did after the sinking of the Moskva, a Russian flagship cruiser, by a Ukrainian strike.
The secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, tweeted a video with the Kerch Bridge on fire and Marilyn Monroe singing her “Happy Birthday Mr. President” song. Putin turned 70 on Friday.
The blast on the bridge occurred hours after explosions rocked the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv early Saturday, sending towering plumes of smoke into the sky and triggering secondary explosions.
Ukrainian officials accused Russia of pounding Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, with surface-to-air missiles in two largely residential neighborhoods.
Kharkiv resident Tetiana Samoilenko's apartment caught fire in the attack. She was in the kitchen when the blast struck, sending glass flying.
“Now I have no roof over my head. Now I don’t know what to do next,” the 80-year-old said.