Ukrainian Twitter sends Putin birthday wishes
There was some “minor” damage to the Kerch bridge early this morning. The bridge is a key supply route between occupied Crimea and the Russian mainland.
Three people were killed after a truck bomb caused a fire and the collapse of a section of a bridge linking Russia with Crimea, Russian officials said.
Russia’s national anti-terrorism committee said the truck bomb set alight seven railway carriages carrying fuel, resulting in a “partial collapse of two sections of the bridge”.
A man and a woman who were riding in a vehicle across the bridge were killed by the explosion and their bodies were recovered, Russia’s investigative committee said. It did not provide details on the third victim.
Meanwhile, Russia’s defence ministry said Russian troops fighting in the Mykolaiv, Kryvyi Rih and Zaporizhzhia regions of southern Ukraine could receive all the supplies they needed via existing land and sea corridors.
Saturday’s explosion on the road-and-rail bridge, which has been used to take Russian personnal and military supplies through the peninsula into other parts of southern Ukraine, brought down sections of road taking traffic in one direction and also damaged railway tracks.
The third victim was perhaps the truck driver?
Question: What kind of security did the Russians have (or not have) for screening traffic crossing such a strategic piece of infrastructure?
The New York Times reminds readers:
The 12-mile-long Kerch Strait Bridge is a cherished political project of President Vladimir V. Putin and had become a potent symbol of the claims that Mr. Putin makes to the peninsula, which his forces illegally seized from Ukraine in 2014. Mr. Putin presided over the opening of the bridge in 2018, personally driving a truck across.
“Kyiv stopped short of claiming responsibility,” reports Associated Press.
Ukrainian twitter, however, rushed to mock Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
What with Russians defecting across the Bering Strait, Donald Trump’s BFF is not having a good week, PR-wise.
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