The speaker of Crimea’s Kremlin-backed regional parliament immediately blamed Ukraine, although the Kremlin did not claim responsibility. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly threatened to strike the bridge and some have praised the attack, but Kyiv has not claimed responsibility. The blast risked a sharp escalation in Russia’s eight-month war, with some Russian lawmakers calling on President Vladimir Putin to declare an “anti-terrorist operation” in retaliation, dropping the term “special military operation” that had downplayed the scope of the battle to ordinary Russians. . A helicopter drops water on burning fuel tanks next to damaged sections of the Kerch Bridge in Crimea’s Kerch Strait on Saturday. (AFP/Getty Images) The Kremlin could use such a move to expand the power of security services, ban rallies, tighten censorship, introduce travel restrictions and extend a partial military mobilization ordered by Putin last month. Hours after the explosion, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that the head of the Air Force, General Sergei Surovykin, would command all Russian troops in Ukraine. Surovikin, who over the summer was put in charge of troops in southern Ukraine, had led Russian forces in Syria and was accused of overseeing a ferocious bombardment that destroyed much of the city of Aleppo. General Sergei Surovikin appears at a Defense Ministry briefing in Moscow on June 9, 2017, when he was commander of Russian forces in Syria. He has been appointed commander of all Russian troops fighting in Ukraine. (Pavel Golovkin/The Associated Press) Moscow, however, continues to suffer losses on the battlefield. On Saturday, a Kremlin-backed official in Ukraine’s Kherson region announced a partial evacuation of civilians from the southern province, one of four illegally annexed by Moscow last week. Kirill Stremousov told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that young children and their parents, as well as the elderly, could be relocated to two regions in southern Russia because Kherson was “preparing for a difficult period”.

The 19km-long Kerch Bridge, across a strait connecting the Black Sea and the Sea of ​​Azov, is a tangible symbol of Moscow’s claims to Crimea and an essential link to the peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The $3.6 billion US bridge, the largest in Europe, is vital to sustaining Russia’s military operations in southern Ukraine. Putin himself presided over the opening of the bridge in 2018. Attacking him “will have a further attempt to degrade Russian morale, [and] it will give Ukraine an extra boost,” said James Nixey of Chatham House, a London think tank. “Meaning the Russians can rebuild it, but they can’t defend it while they’re losing a war.” Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee said a hijacked truck set fire to seven rail cars carrying fuel, resulting in the “partial collapse of two sections of the bridge”. A man and a woman riding in a vehicle across the bridge were killed in the blast and their bodies recovered, Russia’s Investigative Committee said. He did not say who the third victim was. WATCHES | Damage from an explosion on a bridge in Crimea:

The explosion destroys the bridge to Crimea, which is vital to Russia’s war effort

A massive explosion partially destroyed the Kerch Bridge, which links mainland Russia to Crimea and is a key supply artery for the Kremlin’s faltering war effort in southern Ukraine. All vehicles crossing the bridge are supposed to undergo state-of-the-art checks for explosives. The truck that exploded belonged to a resident of the Krasnodar region in southern Russia. Russian authorities said the man’s home was searched and experts were investigating the truck’s route. Train and car traffic over the bridge was temporarily suspended. Car traffic resumed on Saturday afternoon on one of the two links left intact by the blast, with flow alternating in each direction, Russia-backed Crimean regional leader Sergei Aksionov wrote on Telegram. People wait for the ferry in their cars after a truck exploded and heavily damaged the Kerch Bridge linking Crimea with Russia, near Kerch, on Saturday. (AFP/Getty Images) Rail traffic continued slowly. Two passenger trains departed from the Crimean cities of Sevastopol and Simferopol and headed for the bridge on Saturday night. Passenger ferry connections between Crimea and mainland Russia were reopening on Sunday. While Russia seized areas north of Crimea early in its invasion of Ukraine and built a land corridor to it along the Sea of ​​Azov, Ukraine is pushing a counteroffensive to retake those territories. Russia’s defense ministry said its troops in the south receive essential supplies through this corridor and by sea. Russia’s energy ministry said Crimea has enough fuel for 15 days.

War bloggers demand payback

Russian war bloggers responded furiously to the attack on the bridge, urging Moscow to retaliate by hitting Ukrainian urban infrastructure. Putin ordered the creation of a government committee to deal with the emergency. Gennady Zyuganov, head of the Russian Communist Party, said the “terrorist attack” should serve as a wake-up call. “Delayed measures have not yet been taken, the special operation must be transformed into an anti-terrorist operation,” he said. People in Kyiv take selfies on Saturday in front of an image of the Kerch Bridge in Crimea burning. (Vladyslav Musiienko/Reuters) Leonid Slutsky, head of the foreign affairs committee of the Russian lower house of parliament, said “consequences will be imminent” if Ukraine was to blame. And Sergei Mironov, leader of the Just Russia faction, said Russia should respond by attacking key Ukrainian infrastructure, including power stations, bridges and railways. Such statements may herald Putin’s decision to declare an anti-terrorist operation. The parliamentary leader of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s party on Saturday stopped short of claiming that Kyiv was responsible for the incident, but appeared to see it as a consequence of Moscow’s seizure of Crimea. “Russian illegal construction is starting to collapse and catch fire. The reason is simple: if you build something explosive, sooner or later it will explode,” said David Arahamia of the Servant of the People party. Ukraine’s postal service announced it would issue stamps commemorating the explosion, as it did after the Moskva, a Russian cruiser, was sunk by a Ukrainian strike. The secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, tweeted a video of the Kerch bridge burning and Marilyn Monroe singing her famous song Happy Birthday Mr. Putin turned 70 on Friday. In Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said “the reaction of the Kiev regime to the destruction of political infrastructure shows its terrorist character.” Local authorities in Crimea made conflicting statements about what the damaged bridge would mean for residents. The peninsula is a popular destination for Russian tourists and home to a naval base. A Russian tourist association estimated that 50,000 tourists were in Crimea on holiday on Saturday. Missiles bound for Ukraine appear to be fired from Russia’s Belgorod region. (Vadim Belikov/The Associated Press) Elsewhere, the UN nuclear watchdog said Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant had lost its last remaining external power source as a result of renewed shelling and was now relying on emergency diesel generators. Ukrainian authorities have just begun sifting through the wreckage of the devastated city of Liman in eastern Ukraine, assessing the humanitarian toll and the possibility of war crimes after a months-long Russian occupation. The explosion on the bridge came hours after explosions rocked the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv early on Saturday, sending plumes of smoke into the sky and triggering a series of secondary explosions. Ukrainian officials accused Russia of pounding Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, with surface-to-air missiles in two mostly residential neighborhoods. A Ukrainian firefighter helps a woman leave a shelter after Russian shelling in Kharkiv, Ukraine, early Saturday. (Francisco Seco/The Associated Press)