Explosions rock Kyiv after Putin accuses Ukraine of attack on bridge

Explosions shook the Ukrainian capital on Monday after Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of a terrorist attack on a bridge linking Russia and Crimea, sparking calls for reprisals from top officials in Moscow.

Thick smoke rose from central Kyiv after the city was rocked by several loud blasts, witnesses said. It was not immediately clear what caused the explosions and there were no immediate reports of casualties. 

Putin said on Sunday that the blast a day earlier on the bridge over the Kerch Strait, a major supply route for Moscow’s forces in southern Ukraine, was “an act of terrorism aimed at destroying critically important civilian infrastructure”.

“This was devised, carried out and ordered by the Ukrainian special services,” he said in a video on the Kremlin’s Telegram channel.

Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the blast but senior Russian officials demanded a swift response from the Kremlin ahead of a meeting of Putin’s security council on Monday.

Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said ahead of the meeting that Russia should kill the “terrorists” responsible for the attack.

“Russia can only respond to this crime by directly killing terrorists, as is the custom elsewhere in the world. This is what Russian citizens expect,” he was quoted as saying by state news agency Tass.

The Kerch bridge is a vital artery for the port of Sevastopol, where the Russian Black Sea fleet is based, and an imposing symbol of Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula.

Putin opened the 19-km (12-mile) road and rail span linking Crimea to Russia with great fanfare in 2018.

The damage to the bridge came amid battlefield defeats for Russia and initial reports from Ukrainian officials of a mass burial site discovered in the recently liberated eastern town of Lyman.

Putin’s anger over the suspected attack also coincided with growing concerns that Moscow could resort to nuclear weapons, after Putin repeatedly cautioned the West that any attack on Russia could provoke a nuclear response.

Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, said on Sunday a vehicle had exploded on the bridge causing a fire.

The vehicle had travelled through Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia, North Ossetia and Russia’s Krasnodar region before reaching the bridge, he said. Among those who helped Ukrainian special services prepare the attack were “citizens of Russia and foreign countries,” Bastrykin added in the video on the Kremlin’s Telegram channel.

Oleksandr Kovalenko, a military analyst and head of the website Information Resistance, told Espreso TV website, a digital broadcaster well known in Ukraine, that Russia may intensify attacks on civilian targets after the explosion on the Crimea bridge.

“This probably means missile attacks on border areas – Sumy and Chernihiv regions. It could also mean using missiles and (Iranian-made) Shahed-136 drones to hit even deeper into Ukrainian territory,” he said.

Images showed part of the bridge’s road blown away, although rail services and partial road traffic resumed.

The Russian transport ministry, quoted by RIA news agency, said nearly 1,500 people and 162 heavy cargoes had travelled by ferry across the Kerch Strait since the explosion.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Saturday its forces in southern Ukraine could be “fully supplied” through existing land and sea routes.