A truck bomb Saturday caused a fire and the collapse of a section of a bridge linking Russia-annexed Crimea with Russia, Russian officials said.
The 19-kilometer 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. Putin himself presided over the bridge’s opening in 2018.
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 those lands.
Gennady Zyuganov, head of the Russian Communist Party, said the “terror attack” should serve as a wake-up call. “The long-overdue measures haven’t been taken yet, the special operation must be turned into a counterterrorist operation,” he said. 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.
Local authorities in Crimea made conflicting statements about what the damaged bridge would mean for residents. The peninsula is a popular destination for Russian tourists and home to a naval base. A Russian tourist association estimated that 50,000 tourists were in Crimea on vacation on Saturday.
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