Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered increased security at the crucial 19-kilometre Kerch Bridge after an attack on Monday damaged the bridge for which Russia blames Ukraine. The bridge links Russia-annexed Crimea to southern Russia.
Russia vows ‘response’
Speaking on the matter, Putin vowed that there would be a “response” from Russia. Calling the incident “another terrorist act of the Kyiv regime”, he said the attack is pointless from military point of view and has no significance as the bridge has not been used for military purposes in a long time. “It is brutal, because blameless civilians were injured and killed,” he added.
The attack killed a couple, while their 14-year-old daughter was injured, as per Russian authorities. The traffic on the road-and-rail bridge had been halted on Monday following the incident.
Damage to the bridge
Satellite images taken by Maxar Technologies showed the eastbound and westbound lanes of the bridge across the Kerch Strait had sustained serious damage, with at least one section having collapsed. However, the railroad bridge which runs parallel to the highway did not seem to have been damaged
The strike was carried out by two Ukrainian maritime drones, Russia’s National Anti-Terrorist Committee said.
Ukrainian officials were coy about taking responsibility, as they have been in past strikes. But in what appeared to be a tacit acknowledgment, Ukrainian Security Service spokesman Artem Degtyarenko said in a statement that his agency would reveal details of how the “bang” was organized after Kyiv has won the war.
Previous attack on the bridge
The October attack on the bridge came when a truck bomb blew up two of its sections and required months of repair. Moscow decried that assault as an act of terrorism and retaliated by bombarding Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, targeting the country’s power grid over the winter.
In Monday’s blast, the Ukrainian news portal RBK-Ukraina cited a security services source as saying it was carried out by what it called floating drones. A deputy prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, later said on the Telegram messaging service that “today, the Crimea bridge was torn apart by sea drones,” but it was not clear if he was making an official confirmation or referring to earlier reports.
Hours after the attack, video from Russian authorities showed crews picking up debris from the deck of the bridge, a section of which appeared to be sloping to one side, and a damaged black sedan with its passenger door open.
Putin ordered authorities to “thoroughly investigate what happened,” to come up with “concrete proposals to enhance security of this strategically important transport object,” and to “provide all possible support to people who ended up in a difficult position due to the halted traffic on the bridge.”
The Kerch Bridge is a conspicuous symbol of Moscow’s claims on Crimea and an essential land link to the peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014. The $3.6 billion bridge is the longest in Europe and is crucial for Russia’s military operations in southern Ukraine in the nearly 17-month-old war.
Russia has expanded its military forces in Crimea since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Occasional sabotage and other attacks against the Russian military and other facilities on the peninsula have occurred since, with the Kremlin blaming Ukraine.
(With Agency Inputs)