Workers restore the railway tracks on the Kerch bridge that links Crimea to Russia, on Oct. 9 a day after it was damaged by a blast.-/AFP/Getty Images
Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of orchestrating what he called a terrorist attack on a key bridge linking Russia and Crimea, as he prepared to hold a meeting of his security council on Monday.
“There is no doubt. This is an act of terrorism aimed at destroying critically important civilian infrastructure,” Putin said in a video on the Kremlin’s Telegram channel.
“This was devised, carried out and ordered by the Ukrainian special services,” said Putin. He will hold a meeting on Monday of his security council, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by Russian state news agency Tass.
Putin tightens infrastructure security after bomb hits Crimea bridge and damages key supply route
Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said ahead of Monday’s meeting that Russia should kill the “terrorists” responsible for the attack.
“Russia can only respond to this crime by directly killing terrorists, as is the custom elsewhere in the world. This is what Russian citizens expect,” he was quoted as saying by state news agency Tass.
A blast on the bridge over the Kerch Strait, a key supply route for Moscow’s forces in southern Ukraine, had prompted gleeful messages from Ukrainian officials on Saturday but no claim of responsibility.
The bridge is also a vital artery for the port of Sevastopol, where the Russian Black Sea fleet is based, as well as an imposing symbol of Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula.
The damage to the bridge came amid battlefield defeats for Russia and growing concerns that Moscow could resort to nuclear weapons, after Putin repeatedly cautioned the West that any attack on Russia could provoke a nuclear response.
A satellite image shows smoke billowing from a fire on the Crimea Bridge and a section of bridge damaged after a truck exploded.Supplied/AFP/Getty Images
Putin on Sunday met Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, who presented findings of an inquiry into what he said was the explosion of a vehicle and subsequent fire on the bridge.
Bastrykin said the vehicle had traveled through Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia, North Ossetia and Russia’s Krasnodar region before reaching the bridge. Among those who helped Ukrainian special services prepare were “citizens of Russia and foreign countries,” Bastrykin added in the video on the Kremlin’s Telegram channel.
Oleksandr Kovalenko, a military analyst and head of the website Information Resistance, told Espreso TV website, a digital broadcaster well-known in Ukraine, that Russia may intensify attacks on civilian targets after the explosion on the Crimea bridge.
“This probably means missile attacks on border areas - Sumy and Chernihiv regions. It could also mean using missiles and (Iranian-made) Shahed-136 drones to hit even deeper into Ukrainian territory,” he said.
Images showed part of the bridge’s roadway blown away, although rail services and partial road traffic resumed.
The Russian transport ministry, quoted by RIA news agency, said nearly 1,500 people and 162 heavy cargoes had traveled by ferry across the Kerch Strait since the explosion.
Putin opened the 19-km (12-mile) bridge linking Crimea to Russia with great fanfare in 2018.
Russia’s defense ministry said on Saturday its forces in southern Ukraine could be “fully supplied” through existing land and sea routes.