Crimean Bridge to Russian Mainland Hit by Explosion and Fire

Oct. 8, 2022 (EIRNS)—In what appears to be another case of attempted sabotage of critical economic infrastructure, an explosion and fire hit the Kerch Strait Bridge linking Crimea to southern Russia’s Krasnodar region. “Today, at 6:07 am, a truck was blown up on the motorway section of the Crimean Bridge from the Taman Peninsula, which caused seven fuel tanks of a train traveling to the Crimean peninsula to go up in flames. Two motorway sections of the bridge have partially collapsed. The arch over the land part of the bridge has not been damaged,” Russia’s National Anti-Terrorist Committee said in a statement, reported Sputnik. The cause of the explosion is now being investigated. Suspiciously, the explosion, which security cameras caught on video, occurred just as a train that included tank cars carrying diesel fuel was passing on the railroad bridge going in the opposite direction.

Imagery of the incident shows the collapsed spans are only on one side of the motorway, leaving the other direction apparently intact, while several tank cars on the rail bridge were burning. So far, three deaths have been reported. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the formation of a government commission to investigate the incident and deployed Emergencies Minister Alexander Kurenkov and Transport Minister Vitaly Savelyev to the scene. “The commission will also include the heads of the Krasnodar Region and Crimea, as well as officials from the National Guard, the Federal Security Service and the Interior Ministry,” Peskov said, per the statement also on the President’s website.

The speed of the Russian emergency response is impressive. The fire on the railroad bridge was reportedly extinguished within two hours. The Transport Ministry announced that it was putting the Kerch Strait ferries back into service, with the first vessel to arrive in the terminal in Kerch for loading by 8:30 a.m. local time (05:30 UTC). The intact motorway was reopened to vehicular traffic by midday, although at reduced capacity, and a test train ran successfully over the railroad bridge, which apparently suffered no structural damage, sometime in the early evening.

The cause of the explosion remains to be determined, but the Kiev regime is not only gloating about it, since they’ve long hated the bridge, but is practically taking credit for it. “Crimea, the bridge, the beginning,” Mykhailo Podolyak, a top advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, captioned a photo, in English, of the damaged bridge on Twitter. “Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled.”

“The reaction of the Kiev regime to the destruction of civilian infrastructure testifies to its terrorist nature,” Maria Zakharova wrote (in Russian) on her Telegram channel. And a second post (in Russian) reading: “Poland, through the mouth of former Foreign Minister Sikorski, thanked the United States for undermining the gas pipeline. Estonian Foreign Minister Reinsalu congratulated the Ukrainian special forces on the operation against the Crimean bridge.

“Murders, sabotage, destruction, provocations and staging—the criminal logic bound the NATO regimes with mutual responsibility.”