{"id":26337,"date":"2022-10-09T03:53:57","date_gmt":"2022-10-09T03:53:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=26337"},"modified":"2022-10-09T03:53:58","modified_gmt":"2022-10-09T03:53:58","slug":"putin-dealt-bitter-blow-as-blast-cripples-key-bridge-to-crimea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2022\/10\/09\/putin-dealt-bitter-blow-as-blast-cripples-key-bridge-to-crimea\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin dealt bitter blow as blast cripples key bridge to Crimea"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An explosion has crippled the heavily guarded bridge connecting Crimea to the Russian mainland, a hated symbol of Russian occupation and key logistics link for Russian troops in southern Ukraine, in the latest heavy blow to\u00a0Vladimir Putin\u00a0after weeks of military humiliation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Kerch bridge was\u00a0a personal prestige project\u00a0for the Russian president, and the hit came the day after his 70th birthday. The blast destroyed the road into Crimea and left the railway link in flames.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ukraine did not directly claim responsibility for the attack, which Russia said was carried out by a truck bomb. But one senior Ukrainian official posted a \u201chappy birthday\u201d message with images of destruction, and the country\u2019s post office revealed \u2013 within hours \u2013 designs for a commemorative stamp, showing the bridge ablaze, raising questions about whether the explosion had been anticipated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"People
People in Kyiv take selfies in front of an artwork depicting the Kerch bridge on fire. Photograph: Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The leader of President Zelenskiy\u2019s political party also suggested the attack was a consequence of Russia\u2019s illegal occupation of Crimea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRussian 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,\u201d wrote David Arakhamia, head of the Servant of the People party, on Telegram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moscow had claimed the Kerch crossing was virtually untouchable \u2013 protected by layers of defences from trained military dolphins to the latest missile systems \u2013 making the attack particularly damaging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If it was planned in Kyiv, it would be the latest sign of Ukrainian military confidence on the ground, even as Russia claims more Ukrainian territory on paper. No serious military analyst is suggesting that\u00a0Ukraine\u00a0is close to being in a position to regain Crimea, but the idea feels much less fanciful than it did a year ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Russia has threatened retaliation for any attack on the bridge. Celebrations in Ukraine about the damage \u2013 which is likely to make it harder for supplies and reinforcements to reach occupying troops in the south \u2013 were mixed with concern about a possible escalation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Putin has warned that he is prepared to use nuclear weapons, as his troops struggle to halt a Ukrainian counteroffensive that has left them in disarray. On Friday, Zelenskiy, in an interview with the BBC, said Russian officials had begun to \u201cprepare their society\u201d for the possible use of nuclear weapons. \u201cThey begin to prepare their society. That\u2019s very dangerous. They are not ready to do it, to use it. But they begin to communicate. They don\u2019t know whether they\u2019ll use or not use it. I think it\u2019s dangerous to even speak about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Saturday evening, Russia said the rail link across the bridge was operational again but road traffic would remain constricted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies showing damage to the Kerch bridge. Photograph: AP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hours after the explosion, Russia announced\u00a0it had appointed a notorious veteran with a bloody record\u00a0as its first overall commander for the war in Ukraine. Sergei Surovikin opened fire on pro-democracy protesters in the 1990s and led the 2017 Russian military expedition in Syria, where he was accused of using contentious tactics, including indiscriminate bombing of anti-government fighters. His appointment may indicate that Moscow now understands that its military is in danger of collapse in Ukraine, with Kyiv\u2019s forces advancing in all four of the southern regions that Putin claims to have annexed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The explosion on the bridge, which witnesses said could be heard miles away, happened at about 6am on Saturday while a train was crossing; it was engulfed in flames and sections of the road bridge collapsed into the water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russia set up a committee to investigate the attack. Within hours it said three people had been killed and blamed a truck bomb for the blast. It said the driver was a resident of the southern Russian Kuban region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Footage shared on Russian Telegram channels and news agencies appeared to show the moment of the explosion, with two vehicles, a truck and a car, at the centre of the blast, although it was unclear whether either was responsible or simply caught up in the detonation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bridge, which was built on Putin\u2019s orders and inaugurated in 2018, was a key transport link for military equipment to Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine, especially in the south, as well as ferrying troops there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russia had for months assumed that Crimea \u2013 including the Kerch bridge \u2013 was beyond the ability of Ukrainian forces to strike. However, in the past two months a series of explosions have hit sites in the Crimea, including the Saky naval airbase, amid\u00a0mounting confidence in Kyiv that it can retake Crimea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Friday, Ukrainian officials also warned about a crisis at the Zaporizhizhia nuclear plant, Europe\u2019s largest, where weeks of fighting have repeatedly damaged power lines that run cooling systems for reactors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overnight shelling once again cut power to the plant, and Petro Kotin, head of the state nuclear company Energoatom, warned that the plant had only limited diesel to fuel emergency backup generators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRight now we are working on logistics to supply more fuel for these generators,\u201d Kotin told BBC World News. \u201cIf [the generators] run out of fuel, after that they will stop, and after that there will be a disaster \u2026 there will be a melting of the active core and a release of radioactivity from there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An explosion has crippled the heavily guarded bridge connecting Crimea to the Russian mainland, a hated symbol of Russian occupation and key logistics link for Russian troops in southern Ukraine, in the latest heavy blow to\u00a0Vladimir Putin\u00a0after weeks of military humiliation. The Kerch bridge was\u00a0a personal prestige project\u00a0for the Russian president, and the hit came […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":26338,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[11261,11746,5304,2735,8713,8952,5443,8173,13175,9233,6623,8440,5262,11606,8116,10380,7583,5529,6621,8854,9567,6159,5184,6569,2264,12613,10321,11493,9515,5342,5572,5254,5340,6666,11057,11973,10302,3805,11171,71,8598,8174,6431,3457,5217,5659,11233,9205,5618,5818,3349,5594,9616,9178,2485,5180,5555,694,5251,8869,5724,3954,36,63,6874],"class_list":["post-26337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-accused","tag-appointment","tag-attack","tag-bbc","tag-birthday","tag-blast","tag-bomb","tag-bridge","tag-car","tag-collapse","tag-crimea","tag-crisis","tag-cut","tag-democracy","tag-destruction","tag-diesel","tag-driver","tag-energoatom","tag-europe","tag-explosion","tag-explosions","tag-fire","tag-flames","tag-fuel","tag-government","tag-happy-birthday","tag-illegal","tag-interview","tag-killed","tag-kyiv","tag-military","tag-missile","tag-moscow","tag-nuclear","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-one","tag-plant","tag-president","tag-protesters","tag-putin","tag-rail","tag-railway","tag-release","tag-russia","tag-russian","tag-russian-soldiers","tag-russian-troops","tag-satellite","tag-soldiers","tag-strike","tag-syria","tag-traffic","tag-train","tag-troops","tag-truck","tag-ukraine","tag-ukrainian","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-war","tag-water","tag-weapons","tag-will","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-zelenskiy"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}