Russia is blaming Ukraine for the fatal attack on a key bridge in Crimea that left two dead and one injured Monday.
One of the sections of the 12-mile Kerch Bridge in Crimea was blown up Monday, killing a married couple and injuring their daughter. Russia’s National Anti-Terrorist Committee said that this explosion was caused by two Ukrainian sea drones.
Moscow is labeling the explosion as a terrorist attack as the bridge serves as a key symbol of Russia’s claim to Crimea as it connects the two countries. Russia captured Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and has been utilizing the bridge to aid its military operations in southern Ukraine since the war started.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said Monday that Ukraine was a “terrorist organization,” vowing in a Telegram post to “blow up their houses and houses of their relatives, search and eliminate their accomplices.”
This is the second time parts of the Kerch Bridge have exploded since the war started. In October 2022, a truck blast downed two sections of the bridge and resulted in damage that took months to repair. Monday’s blast appears less serious than the October one, as Russian authorities said it did not affect the piers but damaged the decking in a section of one of the two road links.
Just hours after the bridge explosion, Reuters reported that Moscow halted a U.N.-backed grain deal that allowed Ukraine to export grain over the Black Sea. Moscow maintains that there was no connection to Russia ending its participation in the deal with the explosion on the bridge, Reuters reported.
While Kyiv has remained hesitant to speak on who is responsible for the bridge explosion, Ukrainian Security Service spokesman Artem Degtyarenko said in a statement that they would reveal how the “bang” was orchestrated after Ukraine won the war.
The Security Service of Ukraine also tweeted a revised version of a popular lullaby, saying that the bridge “went to sleep again.”
The Associated Press contributed.