Pre-dawn detonations on Monday hit the only bridge connecting the occupied Crimean peninsula to mainland Russia, damaging a vital symbol of President Vladimir V. Putin’s claims to sovereignty over Ukrainian territory and briefly disrupting a key supply line to Russian troops.
The blasts were the second time the Kerch Strait Bridge had been hit in 10 months. And while these did much less damage than an explosives-laden truck that exploded last October, they exposed the vulnerability of the bridge – and other Russian supply routes far from the front – as Ukraine mounts a grueling counter-offensive to retake land.
Russia on Monday accused Ukraine of using maritime drones to attack the bridge, a strategic link for Russian troops fighting in southern Ukraine. Ukrainian officials celebrated the attack, but neither claimed nor denied responsibility for the blasts.
Hours after the attack, Moscow announced it was withdrawing from the Black Sea grain deal, an agreement that had allowed Ukraine to export its grain by sea despite Moscow’s naval blockade. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov said the attack on the bridge was unrelated to Russia’s decision to suspend its participation in the deal, which had helped stabilize global food prices.
Train traffic across the bridge resumed Monday morning. But damage to the lanes, which appeared to have tilted part of the way, threatened to hamper Russian logistics operations, according to video verified by DailyExpertNews.
If the bridge were destroyed or severely damaged, Moscow would be left with a single key land route from Russia, along Ukraine’s southern coast, to support tens of thousands of soldiers fighting to hold territory captured in the first weeks of the invasion.
Mr Putin, in a meeting with transport officials broadcast on state television, condemned the explosions as “another terrorist attack perpetrated by the Kiev regime”. He said the Defense Ministry was preparing Russia’s response and Russia’s main security agency, the FSB, would conduct an investigation.
“Since this is the second terrorist attack on the Crimean bridge,” Putin said, “I await concrete proposals to improve the security of this strategically important transportation facility.”
According to Marat Khusnullin, a Russian deputy prime minister, one bridge segment was destroyed and another segment dislocated more than 30 centimeters. But the main pillars of support remained intact, which Putin called “good news.”
Mr Khusnullin said restricted car traffic could resume as early as Tuesday. Fewer damaged lanes would be restored by mid-September and the rest of the lanes by November, he said.
Pre-war Russian military bloggers and commentators described the attack, which officials said killed two people and wounded a third, as evidence of another failure by the Russian military command. Igor Girkin, a former Russian intelligence officer who runs a prominent blog, said Ukraine would strike again and again until the bridge connection is broken.
The attack came as Ukrainian forces engaged in a dragging counter-offensive, now five weeks old, aimed at driving Russian troops out of areas in southern and eastern Ukraine. Russian troops are dug in behind fields laden with land mines, so the Ukrainian army has been forced to proceed with caution and progress has been slow.
Analysts say isolating Russian troops in Crimea is an essential part of Ukraine’s counter-offensive strategy. Ukrainian ground forces have tried to drive a wedge through the natural land bridge connecting Russia to the peninsula through southern Ukraine, and have repeatedly attacked the bridge Putin ordered to be built after Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014.
When the bridge opened in 2018, Putin hailed it as a “remarkable” achievement that strengthened Crimea. With the opening, he said, “we are all even closer together.”
The explosion that hit the bridge last October was big enough to burst the fuel tanks of a passing train, set it on fire and pull part of the roadway out of its joints and into the sea. Ukrainian officials did not acknowledge any role until months later, but have called the 12-mile bridge a legitimate military target because of its vital logistical role in the Kremlin’s war effort.
“Illegal contraptions used to supply Russian instruments of mass murder are necessarily short-lived, regardless of the reasons for the destruction,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. said on Twitter on Monday.
After the attack in October, Moscow took countermeasures to defend the structure by deploying a ship with an array of radar reflectors to protect the bridge.
A Russian agency, the National Counterterrorism Commission, said in a statement that Ukraine attacked the bridge on Monday with two maritime drones, a claim that could not be independently verified. Videos and photos verified by The Times showed the most significant damage along a span of the bridge leading to Russia. A photo also showed a damaged car on the bridge.
While bringing down a bridge in wartime has historically been difficult, aerial and water drones can offer new ways to target its weakest points.
“Precision-guided weapons, which allow you to hit a specific part of the bridge, make it less difficult to take it out,” said Samuel J. Cox, a retired rear admiral and the director of the Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington. “It allows you to move to a specific point on the bridge where you can deal more damage.”
But bridge designs have improved over the years, meaning a bridge often retains its structural integrity to be repaired, rather than needing to be replaced.
“I think the Russians can sort this out fairly quickly,” said Admiral Cox.
Milan Mazeva, Ivan Nechepurenko, James Gloss And Axel Boda reporting contributed.
