The Crimea Bridge, a key supply line for Russian troops in Ukraine, was damaged in an "emergency" situation which killed two people and injured a child, Russian officials said on Monday, while Ukrainian media reported blasts on the bridge.
Traffic was stopped from using the Russian-built bridge linking Russia to Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014, said Russian officials. Reuters video showed no traffic on the bridge.
The 19-km road and rail bridge has been a pride infrastructure project of President Vladimir Putin, who drove a Mercedes across the bridge in 2022 after it was repaired following an explosion.
Sergei Aksyonov, a Russia-installed governor, said the emergency occurred on the 145th pillar of the bridge which links the Crimean peninsula to the Russian region of Krasnodar. He did not provide any further details.
Russia's transport ministry said that there was damage to the road on the bridge closer to the Crimean Peninsula, but there was no damage to the pillars. It did not say what caused the damage.
The RBC-Ukraine news agency reported that explosions were heard on the bridge.
Russia's Grey Zone channel, a heavily followed Telegram channel affiliated with the Wagner mercenary group, reported that there were two strikes on the bridge at 3:04 a.m. and 3:20 a.m.
The parents of a girl were killed and their daughter was injured in a passenger car on the bridge early on Monday, said Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the Belgorod region in southern Russia. He did not say how the people were killed.
Serhiy Bratchuk, spokesperson for Ukraine's Odesa military administration, posted a photo on his Telegram account of what seemed to show part of the bridge broken. It was not immediately clear whether that was related to any attack.
Reuters was not able to independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
George Barros, an analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, said on Twitter that if the bridge was seriously damaged it would significantly impact Russian supply lines.
"Russia will only have one ground supply line - the coastal highway on the Sea of Azov - to sustain (or evacuate) its tens of thousands of troops in occupied Kherson & Crimea if UKR manages to degrade/destroy the bridge," said Barros.
It was not immediately clear what the incident on the bridge would mean for the U.N.-brokered deal that allows the safe Black Sea export of Ukrainian grain. Ukraine and Russia are among the world's top grain exporters.
The U.N. deal is due to expire on Monday, with the last ship to travel under the deal leaving the port of Odesa early on Sunday, according to a Reuters witness and MarineTraffic.com.
The Crimean Bridge was damaged by an explosion last October, in an attack that the Kremlin said had been orchestrated by Ukrainian security forces. Ukraine admitted only indirectly to the attack months later.
Putin's ally Arkady Rotenberg's company built the vast structure, which is Europe's longest bridge. Putin has long lauded the project, boasting at one point that Russian Tsars and Soviet leaders had dreamed of building it but never did.
The Crimean peninsula has been a major and cherished holiday destination for Russians, especially after Moscow launched its invasion on Ukraine in 2022 and travelling to the West became more difficult for many Russians.
In recent weeks, traffic jams to the entrance of the bridge went for kilometers on daily basis as Russians went on holidays.
On Monday morning the traffic jam ran for kilometers before police directed vehicles away from the bridge. Social media accounts showed cars lined up on the bridge and its entrance.
The Russian-backed administration of the Crimean peninsula urged residents not to travel via the bridge.
© Thomson Reuters 2023.
59 Comments
UChosePoorly
There it is.
cleo
Oh dear. How terrible.
Two blasts, and the bridge is still standing?
Word is that two people were killed and a child injured and taken to hospital. Can’t rejoice over that.
But the bridge needs to be hit again, it seems.
Lord Dartmouth
Leave Crimea alone. They want to be Russian, so let them be. Self-determination and all that.
EFD
Nothing to see here, eh?
No problems with the mighty hand of mini-me at all. Lol
EFD
And Crimea is Ukraine. If some of the residents in that sham of a “referendum” want to be Russian, they can go to Russia. But Crimea is Ukraine.
Cards fan
Says who? I very much doubt it.
Strangerland
Pro-putineers - do you guys want to put out your narrative as to why Putin bombed a bridge controlled by Russia?
Strangerland
Well, after the Russian invaders have been kicked out, the crimeans can make a decision on their future without a gun at the back of their heads.
lincolnman
Well, this is either Zelensky using his UK Storm Shadow missiles effectively...
Or Putin desperate to bring the Russian military back to his side (away from Wagner) by staging another false flag op...
We'll know by the amount of coverage Russia's state-controlled media give it - if they say it's an "accident" then clam up it was the Ukrainians. If they give it broad coverage with lots of "women and children killed" it's clear it was Putin blowing up his own bridge.
Either way, let Putin's prized bridge sink to the bottom of the Black Sea joining his flagship Moskva...
u_s__reamer
Putin's bridge over troubled water needs to put out of service until the Ukrainians get back their Crimea.
ClippetyClop
It’s a bridge waiting to die. Either Ukraine sinks it or the Soviets do on their way out.
Your choice Vlad.
Mr Kipling
Anyone who ever visited would be left in no doubt. It is Russian.
Cards fan
That's doesn't answer my question. Says who?
Mr Kipling
Got to show a "success" even if success is measured by putting traffic off one side of the bridge for two days.
There hasn't been much other success recently.
JJE
Crimea was transferred from the Russia SSR to the Ukraine SSR in 1954 by N.Khrushchev, as a symbolic, administrative gift within the USSR.
It has never been part of the Ukraine in a historical or cultural sense and 98% of people speak Russian.
It was incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1783 by Catherine the Great.
Certain quarters are trying to rewrite history and pretend the above facts don't exist.
Mr Kipling
The people who were living there, taking holidays there, working there.
I visited in 2019, it was Russia, maybe not on the map, or in the minds of Ukraine nationalists or NATO planners but Russia! Very different the rest of "Ukraine". Most Ukrainians would tell you the same if they were being honest. Zelenskyy and his masters also know this, some have admitted so on record.
EFD
And as there was never any other legal mechanism for undoing this, it belongs to Ukraine.
Thanks for the evidence.
Cards fan
lol It belongs to Russia because the people on vacation there say so? complete nonsense.
None of those points mean Crimea is Russian. This is a silly argument. Oh please, that 98% of the people there speak Russian doesn't make it Russia.
JJE
The legal mechanism was enacted in 2014 with its repossession and subsequent referendum in which the people chose to reject the coup-junta in Kyiv.
I thought Ukraine has been trying to purge all symbols of the USSR - Crimea is the biggest one; they should be thrilled to be rid of it.
wallace
The referendum in Crimea was an illegal one by international conventions and treaties which Russia is a signature of.
albaleo
While there may be doubts about the referendum of 2014, various opinion polls from around the same time indicate strong support for joining Russia. (Germany's GfK Group, Gallup, Pew Research)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Crimean_status_referendum
Cards fan
You mean the sham referendum sponsored by the Putin regime that isn't recognized by any country, save for despotic third world countries? That the one?
Yeah, no.
Cards fan
So what? That's not how independence is established. If enough people in a Russian oblast wanted to join the US do you think the Russian government would honor those results?
Sven Asai
The error you all make is to think this war is caused by very big differences. No, in contrary, it’s because of their similarities.
rainyday
Video of damage to the bridge is starting to circulate.
Looks expensive.
M3M3M3
Strictly speaking, you're correct. The problem is that many of those trying to hold Russia to this strict application of international law are also the first to insist that the same rules shouldn't apply to Kosovo or Taiwan. You can't have it both ways. Decades of hypocrisy and double-standards have completely eroded the norms you are trying to rely on.
TaiwanIsNotChina
It's a good idea in general but take at least part of it down, for cripes sake! Also might not have been a good idea on the day Russia will be made to renew the grain deal. The next day would have been better.
Thuban
A young girl is in critical care and the world is holding their breath hoping that she survives while Russian doctors bravely try to keep her alive in a Crimean hospital.
Both of her parents were killed in the attack.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Certain quarters are trying to pretend that the UN charter doesn't exist, nor the Budapest Memorandum.
albaleo
What they would do and what they should do are different matters. (Although I doubt the US would want to accept a Russian oblast.) As M3M3M3 says, there are a lot of double standards around the concept of self-determination. Taiwan - yes; Donbas - no; Catalonia - mumble, mumble.
M3M3M3
@rainyday
Please clarify your position because it's not at all clear. If Crimea had held it's referendum, unilaterally declared independence from Ukraine, but remained an independent state allied with Russia (but never formally annexed by the RF) you would support this unilateral independence in the same way you support unilateral independence for Kosovo and Taiwan? Is it only the formal annexation by a third country that you oppose?
wallace
The Russians are the terrorists,
TaiwanIsNotChina
Your Taiwan analogy is completely irrelevant. The PRC broke off from the ROC (Taiwan).
wallace
How many Ukrainian children were killed in Russian bombings? I am sorry for the deaths of all civilians, especially young children. Putin could end it today.
Cards fan
I reject the very notion that the entirety of a nation must abandon a part of that country if that party, and only that part, wants to separate. Why "should?" What you're suggesting sounds like a haphazard, inherently unstable way of governance. Where would it end? Could individual city blocks declare independence from the adjacent blocks?
fallaffel
The easiest way to stop attacks on Russia is to stop attacking Ukraine. Many Russian generals seem to be understanding this, which is why they're getting fired or disappeared lately.
wallace
When a country like Russia attacks a sovereign country like Ukraine, then the whole of Russia becomes a target.
Blacklabel
Terrorism that killed civilians and injured a child.
Cards fan
Nonsense. A bridge carrying military supplies is a legitimate target. The death of civilians is regrettable and it wouldn't have happened the Russian imperialists not invaded Ukraine, bombing and killing civilians each and every day.
Blacklabel
No that’s really what it is.
civilians are dead. And a small child injured.
Cards fan
No it isn't. That's not what terrorism means.
Yes, and each and every day Russia does the same to Ukrainian civilians. Nary a peep from the right.
nosuke
Ukraine had already tooken a big whoopen the attack on that bridge is just going to spark Putin wrath.
I hear the war there in like hell on earth. Peace talks are needed to end the madness. But NATO continues and presses on and keeps fueling the fire.
EFD
Zero legal basis and less legitimacy. Nobody outside Russia recognizes it and certainly not the UN.
CRIMEA is Ukraine.
Cards fan
This is total nonsense, but it is true the bombed bridge was used to carry munitions used to murder innocent Ukrainians.
Moonraker
Thanks, Mr kipling, it tells us a lot.
proxy
2.4 million civilians in Crimea were cut off from food and medical supplies. That sounds like a war crime.
Cards fan
I think Russia should stop letting civilians on the bridge. That or they should stop using the bridge to supply munitions to kill innocent Ukrainians. Ukraine has the right to self-defense.
itsonlyrocknroll
It is well beyond the Russian sell by date military presence in Ukraine.
Time to withdraw and allow a UN/European peace keeping force.
Just please restrict Macron, Olaf Scholz to appease Putin regime with another cowardly political fudge.
Cards fan
The bridge is the only bridge, the only way, other than ship, to get military supplies to the Russian military in temporarily occupied Ukraine. Thus it's a perfectly legitimate military target.
Blacklabel
A military target? Even when civilians are there?
Cards fan
Is the bridge used to supply weapons to kill Ukrainians?
M3M3M3
@TaiwanIsNotChina
Again, your theories concerning the succession of states under international law are entirely misconceived. A revolution which replaces an existing government with a new government does not amount to declaring independence from the existing state or creating an entirely new state.
If your theories were correct, where does it leave Ukraine after the 2014 Maidan revolution? Is Zelensky's Ukraine not the successor state of pre-2014 Ukraine? Is it an entirely new state? Where is the "old" Ukraine and is Viktor Yanukovich still the president there? Clearly, it's nonsense with no basis in international law.
itsonlyrocknroll
Time has run out when the special military operation, morphed into a blood bath, the appalling atrocities,
Leaving Ukraine a country devastated, its people strength and courage reminiscent of a Europe brutalized amidst the people of Russia that once evoked heroism, pride and anxiety.
What is left, is a Russian Government regime in a state of self destructive behavior that could sooner or later bring the global community to the brink of the use of a tactical nuclear exchange.
Putin is the seat, the big chair of government, the political cesspit that is hiding in the shadows is a different matter altogether.
cleo
Like the civilians who dared to sleep in their own beds at night and got bombed?
Like the civilians who had their heating and water cut off in the middle of a freezing winter?
Like the civilians trying to evacuate who got blown out of their vehicles?
But out of curiosity, what was a family with a child doing on a military bridge in a war zone in the middle of the night?
Blacklabel
no because it’s a “Ukrainian” bridge.
can you blow up every civilian ship in water the military uses? Every vehicle, even civilian, on a road the military uses once a week?
so I guess blowing up a pizza parlor where military meets and eats would be ok too, if so?
albaleo
And yet the principle of self-determination of peoples (not nations) is in the UN Charter.
Cards fan
lolol No it's not. It's a bridge the Russian government illegally built in temporarily occupied Crimea.
And it's definitely being used to haul munitions to kill Ukrainian civilians.
JeffLee
So blame Moscow. Last summer, the Ukraine Defence Ministry issued a warning, including a PR video, urging Russian civilians not to go to Crimea on account of, hello, the dangers posed by Putin’s war. The Russian government, meanwhile, has been promoting the local beaches as vacation destinations, not caring a hoot that many would need to use a key piece of military logistics infrastructure, aka "a bombing target."
What’’s more, the attacks were around 3 am, when the least amount of civilian lives are at risk.
It’s clear to any sane person which side is trying to minimize civilian casualties and which side is perfectly ok with inflicting them or otherwise letting them happen, even to its own people.
wallace
The Russians have killed many more Ukrainian men, women, and children.