Crimea’s Kerch bridge targeted in second attack
Two people have died after the Kerch bridge linking Russia to annexed Crimea was attacked again. A series of explosions occurred just after 3 a.m. local time today on the 12-mile long bridge, reportedly damaging two of the bridge’s spans.
The Russian-installed head of the Crimean parliament, Vladimir Konstatinov, has blamed the ‘terrorist regime in Kyiv’ for the incident. In a statement published on his Telegram channel, he has accused Ukraine of a ‘new crime’, saying they would have known that the vehicular part of the bridge was ‘an exclusively civilian facility’.
The Ukrainian military has made no secret of the fact they consider the bridge to be a legitimate military target
Meanwhile, Ukrainian media is reporting that Kyiv’s navy and security services were behind the explosions, and that drones were used to blow up the bridge. The newspaper RBK-Ukraine quotes[1] an unnamed source in Ukraine’s security services who said, ‘The bridge was attacked with surface drones. It was difficult to reach the bridge, but in the end it was possible.’
As has become customary for Ukraine, the country’s authorities are yet to comment on the incident or claim responsibility for it. Footage circulating on social media shows the aftermath of the two explosions on the bridge, with plumes of rising smoke[2] and a portion of the bridge’s illumination cutting out. Meanwhile videos of the incident’s aftermath taken this morning show[3] a mangled and shattered portion of the bridge’s metal and concrete structure, apparently the a result of the attack.
In the immediate aftermath of the incident, traffic over the bridge was stopped by the Crimean authorities, with trains also temporarily suspended from crossing. The ferry service which runs parallel to the bridge between Crimea and Russia was also paused for several hours.
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The Russian authorities have confirmed that two people, a couple from the Russian region of Belgorod which borders Ukraine, were killed in the incident. The couple’s teenage daughter, meanwhile, has reportedly been taken to hospital with serious injuries.
The Kremlin has gone a step further than Konstatinov. The Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova baselessly claimed that this attack was carried out by Ukraine with backing from American and British intelligence.
Just hours after the attack on the bridge, the Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov announced that Russia has pulled out of the Black Sea grain deal to allow the international export of grain from Ukraine’s ports. Peskov claimed that the decision to suspend Russia’s participation in the deal, brokered last year by the UN and Turkey, had nothing to do with this morning’s events. Calling them ‘absolutely unrelated events’, Peskov said that ‘even before the terrorist attack, this position was declared by President Putin’ after certain conditions for the deal’s extension had not been fulfilled.
Whoever is responsible, this is the second time in less than a year that the Kerch bridge has been targeted in an attack. Last October, a 250-metre portion of the bridge’s road and rail route was blown up, using explosives planted in a civilian truck that was crossing the bridge at the time. While it was widely suspected that Ukraine was responsible, this remains unconfirmed. But over the past year, the Ukrainian military has made no secret of the fact they consider the bridge to be a legitimate military target.
As a result of that first attack, the bridge underwent several months of intensive repair works and was only fully reopened again in February of this year. Much to the irritation of Russian tourists, ever since the bridge reopened, additional security checks introduced for vehicles going on to the bridge have been causing hours-long tailbacks.
While damage to the Kerch bridge is seemingly less severe this time around, with the bridge’s rail route apparently unharmed, this attack once more has the potential to cause logistical challenges to Russia’s war effort in Ukraine and its occupation of Crimea. With Ukraine’s counter-offensive well under way, the Ukrainian army will have been looking for ways to disrupt Russia’s ability to support its troops occupying Crimea and the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson.
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then subscribe from as little as £1 a week after that SUBSCRIBE [5]As the only vehicular route to directly link Crimea and Russia, while the road is out of action, any Russians trying to get to and from the peninsula will be forced to travel through the Russian-occupied territories of Donetsk or Luhansk, closer to the front line and therefore more dangerous. According to one Crimean government source, the bridge might take up to a month[6] to fix.
For Putin, the Kerch bridge holds a special significance, a physical symbol of his efforts to incorporate Crimea, and more widely Ukraine, into Russia. Such was the importance of the bridge, the president personally opened it upon its completion in 2018, driving an enormous truck across it. Therefore, in Ukraine’s eyes, there are not only practical incentives for targeting the bridge, but symbolic ones too: to destroy it permanently would be to destroy a key colonial symbol of Putin’s occupation.