Truck bomb hits bridge to Crimea, hurts Russian supply lines
Published:Saturday | October 8, 2022 | 10:55 AM
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — An explosion Saturday caused the partial collapse of a bridge linking the Crimean Peninsula with Russia, damaging a key supply artery for the Kremlin's faltering war effort in southern Ukraine.
Russian authorities said a truck bomb caused the blast and that three people were killed.
The speaker of Crimea's Kremlin-backed regional parliament immediately accused Ukraine of being behind the explosion, though Moscow didn't apportion blame.
Ukrainian officials have repeatedly threatened to strike the bridge and some lauded the destruction, but Kyiv stopped short of claiming responsibility.
The explosion risked a sharp escalation in Russia's eight-month war, with some Russian lawmakers calling for Russian President Vladimir Putin to declare a “counterterrorism operation” in retaliation, shedding the term “special military operation” that had downplayed the scope of fighting to ordinary Russians.
The Kremlin could use such a move to further broaden the powers of security agencies, ban rallies, tighten censorship, introduce restrictions on travel and expand a partial military mobilisation that Putin ordered last month.
Hours after the explosion, Russia's Defense Ministry announced that the air force chief, General Sergei Surovikin, would command all Russian troops in Ukraine.
Surovikin, who over the summer was placed in charge of Russian troops in southern Ukraine, had led Russian forces in Syria and was accused of overseeing a brutal bombardment that destroyed much of the city of Aleppo.
On Saturday, a Kremlin-backed official in Ukraine's Kherson region announced a partial evacuation of civilians from the southern province, one of four illegally annexed by Moscow last week, amid an ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive. Kirill Stremousov told Russia's state-run RIA Novosti agency that young children and their parents, as well as the elderly, could be relocated to two southern Russian regions because Kherson was getting “ready for a difficult period.”
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