KYIV: Russian divers were to examine on Sunday (Oct 9) the damage from a powerful blast on a road-and-rail bridge to Crimea that is an imposing symbol of Moscow’s annexation of the peninsula and a key supply route to its forces battling in southern Ukraine.
Saturday’s explosion on the bridge over the Kerch Strait prompted gleeful messages from Ukrainian officials but no claim of responsibility. Russia did not immediately assign blame.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said the divers would start work in the morning, with a more detailed survey above the waterline expected to be complete by day’s end, domestic news agencies reported.
“The situation is manageable – it’s unpleasant, but not fatal,” Crimea’s Russian governor, Sergei Aksyonov, told reporters. “Of course, emotions have been triggered and there is a healthy desire to seek revenge.”
The peninsula had a month’s worth of fuel and more than two months’ worth of food, he said. Russia’s defence ministry said its forces in southern Ukraine could be “fully supplied” through existing land and sea routes.
Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and the 19km bridge linking the region to its transport network was opened with great fanfare four years later by President Vladimir Putin.
Kyiv demands that Russian forces leave the Black Sea peninsula, as well as Ukrainian territory they have seized in the invasion Putin launched in February.
It was not yet clear if Saturday’s blast was a deliberate attack, but the damage to such a high-profile structure came amid battlefield defeats for Russia, and could further cloud Kremlin reassurances that the conflict is going to plan.
Elsewhere, at least 12 people were killed as a result of shelling in Ukraine’s southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia in the early hours of Sunday, and 49 people were hospitalised, including six children, Ukrainian officials said.
A nine-storey building was partially destroyed overnight, five other residential buildings were levelled and many more damaged in 12 Russian missile attacks, said Oleksandr Starukh, the governor of the Zaporizhzhia region.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports.
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