Broadcasting News Corporation : A powerful blast brought down part of a strategic bridge linking Russia and the Crimea peninsula, shutting down a major military supply artery to southern Ukraine at least temporarily.
Three people were killed in the Saturday explosion, Russian authorities said. Coming a day after Vladimir Putin’s 70th birthday, the bombing targeted the 12-mile Kerch bridge, which opened with great fanfare in 2018, four years after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine. Ukrainian officials did not claim responsibility for the attack, but celebrated it online. “Good morning!” Defense Secretary Oleksiy Danilov tweeted, with a video of the bridge explosion sharing a split screen with a video clip of Marilyn Monroe singing, “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.” The Ukrainian Defense Ministry tweeted, “The guided missile cruiser Moskva and the Kerch Bridge – two notorious symbols of Russian power in Ukranian Crimea – have gone down. What’s next in lines, Russkies?” The road bridge was still intact in one direction, Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian governor of Crimea, said on social media. Traffic was suspended while the damage was assessed. The bridge is not only a crucial supply route for Russian forces who are fighting in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, but also for civilians living in Crimea.
A Ukrainian presidential adviser posted a message on Twitter saying the incident was just “the beginning” but stopped short of saying Ukrainian forces were responsible for the blast. “Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything that is stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled,” wrote Mykhailo Podolyak shortly after the explosion. In a later post, he suggested the culprit was the Russian FSB, the security police that succeeded the Soviet KGB. “It is still not clear who blew up the bridge?” he added. “Let me remind you that the truck arrived from the Russian Federation.” He suggested the blast would provide cover for the Russian military’s “future South loss.” President Volodymr Zelensky was active on social media Saturday, including a post about the southern region of Zaporozhia that said in part, “Not one centimeter of our land will be controlled by the invaders,” but he notably did not mention the bridge explosion. Putin has instructed the government to create a state commission to investigate the incident, TASS news agency reported, citing Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Interfax quoted the chairman of the Crimean republic’s State Council, Vladimir Konstantinov, as saying that “Ukrainian vandals managed to reach for the Crimean bridge with their bloody hands.” With Post wires. NEWS COLLECTED FROM NEW YORK POST.