Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine of orchestrating the powerful blast that damaged a key bridge linking Russia and Crimea the day before, describing the explosion as an ‘act of terrorism’.
“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 yesterday.
“This was devised, carried out and ordered by the Ukrainian special services,” Putin said.
His statement came after a Russian missile attack early on Sunday struck an apartment block and other residential buildings in Ukraine’s southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, killing at least 13 people and wounding 89 others, Ukrainian officials said.
The pre-dawn strikes were the second such attack against the city in three days.
Putin was meeting Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, who presented findings of an inquiry into what he said was Saturday’s explosion of a vehicle and subsequent fire on the bridge.
The 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 major artery for the port of Sevastopol, where the Russian Black Sea fleet is based.
Speaking on camera, Bastrykin said investigators had established the route that the vehicle had taken and the individuals who were involved in its movements.
He said that it had gone through Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia, South Ossetia and Russia’s Krasnodar region before arriving on the bridge.
The damage to the bridge, which had been an imposing symbol of Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula, came amid battlefield defeats for Russia, and could further cloud Kremlin reassurances that the conflict is going to plan.
Rail services and partial road traffic resumed a day after the blast. Images showed half of a section of the bridge’s roadway blown away, with the other half still attached.
Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and the 19km bridge linking the region to its transport network was opened with great fanfare four years later by Putin.
In the Zaporizhzhia attack, Russian aircraft launched at least 12 missiles, partially destroying a nine-storey apartment block, levelling five other residential buildings and damaging many more, Oleksandr Starukh, governor of the region, said on state-run television.
Sixty wounded people were admitted to hospital, Ukrainian officials said. They included 11 children.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy condemned the attack as ‘absolute evil’ by people he called ‘savages and terrorists’, vowing those responsible would be brought to justice.
Zaporizhzhia city, about 52km from a Russian-held nuclear power plant.
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