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A giant fire sparked by a car bomb has broken out on a key bridge linking Crimea to Russia, which annexed the territory in 2014, Moscow said Saturday, without immediately blaming Ukraine.<\/p>\n
The road-and-rail bridge, built on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin and inaugurated in 2018, was a key transport link for carrying military equipment to Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine, especially in the south, as well as ferrying troops across.<\/p>\n
Spanning the Kerch Strait, it is the only crossing between occupied Crimean territory and Russia.<\/p>\n
“Today at 6:07 a.m. [03:07 GMT] on the road traffic side of the Crimean bridge … a car bomb exploded, setting fire to seven oil tankers being carried by rail to Crimea,” Russian news agencies cited the national anti-terrorism committee as saying.<\/p>\n
The Kremlin spokesman said Putin had ordered the establishment of a commission to look into the blast, Russian news agencies reported.<\/p>\n
The head of the Russian-installed regional parliament in Crimea, Vladimir Konstantinov, blamed it on “Ukrainian vandals.”<\/p>\n
Russia had maintained the bridge was safe despite the fighting in Ukraine but had threatened Kyiv with reprisals if it was attacked.<\/p>\n
If it is established that Ukraine was behind the blast, it is a matter of serious concern for Moscow as the bridge is far from the front line.<\/p>\n
There have been several explosions at Russian military installations in the Crimean peninsula.<\/p>\n
Ukraine’s recent lightning territorial gains in the east and south have undermined a claim from the Kremlin last week that it annexed Donetsk, neighboring Luhansk and the southern regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.<\/p>\n
The four territories create a crucial land corridor between Russia and the Crimean peninsula, and together make up around 20% of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Russia’s investigative committee said it had “initiated a criminal case in connection with the incident on the Crimean bridge,” adding that “a truck was blown up.”<\/p>\n
“According to preliminary information, this morning on the automobile part of the Crimean bridge from the side of the Taman Peninsula, a truck was blown up, which caused seven fuel tanks to ignite on a train heading toward the Crimea peninsula,” the committee said.<\/p>\n
“As a result, two lanes partially collapsed.”<\/p>\n
Dramatic videos on social media showed the giant bridge \u2014 hugely important to the Kremlin \u2014 on fire and partially collapsed into the sea.<\/p>\n
The investigative committee said it had sent detectives to the scene.<\/p>\n
“Investigators of the Russian Investigative Committee are establishing all the circumstances of the incident and persons involved in the crime.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A giant fire sparked by a car bomb has broken out on a key bridge linking Crimea to Russia, which annexed the territory in 2014, Moscow said Saturday, without immediately blaming Ukraine. The road-and-rail bridge, built on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin and inaugurated in 2018, was a key transport link for carrying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":182932,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10221280388112155_325455220908133":"","twitter_917774835383787521_917774835383787521":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182931"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182933,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182931\/revisions\/182933"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}