Lisa Haseldine & Svitlana Morenets

The Kerch bridge attack is devastating for Putin

The bridge was vital for supplying Russia's war effort in Ukraine

The Kerch bridge this morning (Credit: Twitter)

It’s hard to overstate the impact of the bombing of the Kerch bridge. Opened four years ago to great fanfare, the 12-mile long bridge came to embody Vladimir Putin’s claim on conquered Crimea. It symbolised his ability to protect and supply the area and reunify the ‘Russian world’ (Russkiy mir).

At about 6am local time, just after Putin celebrated his 70th birthday, CCTV footage shows a huge explosion ripping through both the rail and road bridge. Parts of the road bridge have collapsed into the sea, destroying two of its four lanes. It has since reopened to some passenger traffic and plans to reopen to trains, but not to trucks – which suggests its substructure has been damaged too much to allow military use.

Russian state media is reporting that a supposedly explosive-filled truck filmed driving towards the blast on CCTV is responsible – the TASS news agency has said that the owner of the truck has been traced to the Russian region of Kuban’. It added that the explosion was all the worse because the truck “set fire to seven fuel tanks from the train that was on the railway part of the train.” Some Western analysts have, however, suggested that the force of the explosion indicates something more powerful was used.


This attack now raises the obvious question about how Putin will respond and whether he will deploy his nuclear arsenal

Ukraine has yet to come out and claim it – its secret service has published a taunting Tweet but so far there has been nothing from Zelensky. This leaves open the possibility that this was a self-inflicted strike by Russia, a so-called ‘false flag’ attack to facilitate an escalation of the conflict.

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