As a huge explosion blows apart vital link between Russia and seized Crimea, Ukraine celebrates

It’s a photo that shows the stunning devastation wrought to the only rail and road link between Russia and Crimea after a massive explosion left a fuel train in flames and collapsed the spans of the roadway below.

The massive fireball exploded on the 12-mile Kerch Bridge shortly after 6 a.m. yesterday, dealing a hugely symbolic blow to Vladimir Putin and provoking cheers in Ukraine.

The Russian president ordered construction of the bridge in 2014 after his illegal annexation of Crimea – the first step in his attack on Ukrainian soil. He stated it was a “miracle” after he drove a truck over it four years ago to open the building.

Now the daring attack demonstrates his inability to protect any part of the land he has snatched from Ukraine — and is raising the stakes in this war as fears grow that the beleaguered Kremlin could respond to setbacks with a nuclear strike.

The massive fireball exploded on the 12-mile Kerch Bridge shortly after 6 a.m. yesterday, dealing a hugely symbolic blow to Vladimir Putin and sparking cheers in Ukraine

Russian media had boasted that the heavily defended bridge was impregnable. The railway is a critical supply route for their military operations in the Kherson region, although Moscow last night claimed limited road and rail traffic would resume.

Yet the strike was a crushing humiliation for Putin. He demanded the construction of the £2.7 billion bridge, the longest in Europe, and saw it as his favorite project.

Several Ukrainian media quoted sources as claiming that the attack on the abhorred symbol of the Russian occupation of their country was carried out by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). Russia blamed a truck bomb and the footage showed a truck on the bridge before the blast.

A spokesman for the SBU declined to comment. But the organization tweeted four lines that paraphrased a poem by Taras Shevchenko, the country’s most famous writer:

‘It is morning/ The bridge burns beautifully/ Nightingale in Crimea/ Greet SBU.’

Cars are pictured tonight under the damaged bridge connecting Crimea to Russia, hours after a massive explosion

On the right you can see the railway bridge from Russia to the Crimean peninsula going up in flames, while a huge part of the road bridge has collapsed into the sea

Ukraine’s post office immediately issued a stamp to mark the bridge’s destruction, while the country’s second-largest bank offered a new debit card design featuring the collapsed bridge. Delighted Ukrainians noted that the attack came the day after Putin’s 70th birthday, including Oleksii Danilov, secretary of the Ukrainian National Security Council.

He shared a video of the damaged bridge on social media alongside Marilyn Monroe’s famous rendition of “Happy Birthday Mr President” to John F. Kennedy in 1962.

Even pro-government newspapers in Russia have previously admitted that hitting the bridge through Ukraine would be “a serious blow to Russia,” though they ruled out the possibility of an attack succeeding. The structure was protected by air defenses, advanced sonar systems to detect underwater saboteurs, and a special naval brigade of the National Guard with machine guns and rocket launchers.

But according to the Russian National Anti-Terror Committee, a truck exploded on the road and the fuel tanks of a freight train caught fire on a parallel railway bridge. Three people in a car died in the explosion, their bodies found in the water.

The Russian president ordered construction of the bridge in 2014 after his illegal annexation of Crimea – the first step in his attack on Ukrainian soil

Russian sources said firefighters struggled to extinguish the blaze due to high winds and leaking fuel, which resulted in damage to an estimated 1.3 kilometers of railway line. Putin has set up a government agency to investigate the explosion and oversee repairs, while Sergei Aksyonov, his Crimean stooge, urged residents not to panic.

He insisted that the peninsula has adequate supplies of food and fuel amid signs of panic buying. Moscow’s transport ministry said in a statement that their “experts” expected the level crossings to resume soon after “a primary assessment of the infrastructure condition of the railway section of the Crimean Bridge.”

The railway is a vital supply route for the Kremlin’s operations in the Kherson region, where they have been pushed back at least 20 miles this month. It became even more important after the loss of rail interchanges in eastern Ukraine last month.

“If the Kerch Bridge railway lines are taken out of service for a significant period of time, it could be game over for Russian forces in Kherson,” said Phillips O’Brien, a military logistics expert and professor of strategic studies at the United Nations. St Andrews University.

Moscow’s forces have been pushed back to the battlefields to the northeast and south, with heavy casualties forcing Putin into mass mobilization, leading to an exodus of potential recruits and increasing domestic criticism from hard-core Kremlin allies.

Ukrainian President Zelensky said on Friday that his forces recaptured another 800 square kilometers in the east last week, following last month’s dramatic breakthrough in the Kharkiv region.

The Ukrainian president does not hide his determination to drive Moscow’s troops off all their land, recently stating that ‘this Russian war… started with Crimea and must end with Crimea – with its liberation’.

Additional coverage: Kate Baklitskaya