Russian divers to inspect Crimea bridge as governor warns of ‘desire to seek revenge’

Russian divers are to examine the extent of the damage caused by a powerful blast on Russia’s road-and-rail bridge to Crimea, a hated symbol of Russian occupation and key logistics link for Russian troops in southern Ukraine.

Russian news agencies quoted the deputy prime minister, Marat Khusnullin, as saying the divers would start work on Sunday at 6am (0300 GMT), with a more detailed survey above the waterline expected to be complete by the end of the day.

“The situation is manageable – it’s unpleasant, but not fatal,” the Kremlin-installed governor of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said. “Of course, emotions have been triggered and there is a healthy desire to seek revenge.”

Russia has previously threatened retaliation for any attack on the bridge. Celebrations in Ukraine about the damage – which is likely to make it harder for supplies and reinforcements to reach occupying troops in the south – were mixed with concern about a possible escalation.

Ukraine did not directly claim responsibility for the attack, which Russia said was carried out by a truck bomb. But one senior Ukrainian official posted a “happy birthday” message with images of destruction, and the country’s post office revealed – within hours – designs for a commemorative stamp, showing the bridge ablaze, raising questions about whether the explosion had been anticipated.

The peninsula had a month’s worth of fuel and more than two months’ worth of food, Aksyonov said. Russia’s defence ministry said its forces in southern Ukraine could be “fully supplied” through existing land and sea routes.

On Saturday night in the city of Zaporizhzhia, in Ukraine’s south-east, at least 17 people were killed in an overnight missile attack, a local official said on Sunday. Apartment buildings and roads in a residential area were damaged, Anatoliy Kurtev said on Telegram.

Anton Gerashchenko, a senior presidential adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said 40 were injured, but that the figures were only preliminary.

In Crimea, limited road traffic resumed about 10 hours after Saturday’s explosion, and Russia’s transport ministry cleared rail traffic to restart.

The bridge is a major artery for the Russian forces that control most of southern Ukraine’s Kherson region and for the Russian naval port of Sevastopol, whose governor told locals: “Keep calm, don’t panic.”

Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and the 19km (12-mile) Crimean bridge linking the region to Russia’s transport network was opened with great fanfare four years later by President Vladimir Putin. Kyiv demands that Russian forces leave the Black Sea peninsula, as well as Ukrainian territory they seized in the invasion Putin launched in February.

It was not yet clear if the Kerch bridge blast was a deliberate attack, but the damage to such a high-profile structure came amid several battlefield defeats for Russia, and could further cloud Kremlin reassurances that the conflict is going to plan.

Putin signed a decree on Saturday instructing tighter security for the bridge as well as the infrastructure supplying electricity and natural gas to Crimea and ordered an investigation.

 “Conceivably the Russians can rebuild it, but they can’t defend it while losing a war,” said James Nixey, a political analyst at British thinktank Chatham House.

Russian officials said three people had been killed, probably the occupants of a car travelling near a truck that blew up. On the bridge’s upper level, seven fuel tanker wagons of a 59-wagon train heading for the peninsula also caught fire.

Hours after the explosion, Russia announced it had appointed a notorious veteran with a bloody record as its first overall commander for the war in Ukraine. Sergei Surovikin opened fire on pro-democracy protesters in the 1990s and led the 2017 Russian military expedition in Syria, where he was accused of using contentious tactics, including indiscriminate bombing of anti-government fighters. His appointment may indicate that Moscow now understands that its military is in danger of collapse in Ukraine, with Kyiv’s forces advancing in all four of the southern regions that Putin claims to have annexed.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, did not refer to the bridge blast in a video address on Saturday, saying merely that the weather in Crimea was cloudy but also warm.

“But however cloudy it is, Ukrainians know ... our future is sunny,” he said. “This is a future without occupiers, across our territory, particularly in Crimea.“

Zelenskiy also said, however, that Ukrainian troops were involved in very tough fighting near Bakhmut, a strategically important town in eastern Ukraine that Russia is trying to capture.

“We are holding our positions in the Donbas, in particular in the Bakhmut direction, where it is very, very difficult now – very tough fighting,” he said.

Since the war started in February, Ukrainian officials have regularly suggested they want to destroy the Kerch bridge. Ukraine’s postal service said it would print a special stamp.

“Undoubtedly, we are witnessing the beginning of large-scale negative processes in Russia,” Zelenskiy adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said in a commentary, blaming infighting among Putin’s circle as he attributed the blast to Russian operators.

A Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said Kyiv’s reaction to the destruction of civilian infrastructure “testifies to its terrorist nature”.

The Russian National Anti-Terrorism Committee said a freight truck had blown up on the bridge’s roadway at 6.07am (0307 GMT). It said two spans of road bridge had partially collapsed, but that the arch spanning the channel through which ships travel between the Black Sea and Azov Sea was not damaged.

The emergencies minister, Alexander Kurenkov, told Russian state news agency Tass that quick-thinking railway workers who uncoupled the burning fuel wagons had kept the blaze from spreading.

Images showed half of the roadway blown away, with the other half still attached.

Moscow has portrayed largely Russian-speaking Crimea as a historic part of Russia and, especially this year, one where its citizens could holiday.

The blast “will not affect army supply very much”, said Kirill Stremousov, the Russian-installed deputy administrator of the Kherson region.

“But there will be problems with logistics for Crimea,” he added in a social media post.