The WSJ has coverage of the attack online. I'll bold the interesting parts about the extent of the damage and informed speculation on how it was done. I'm pleased that rail portion may be out of use due to the effect of the heat from the fire and that rerouting the rail traffic is very problematic.
Crimea Bridge Explosion Disrupts Crucial Supply Route for Russian Forces - Russian officials blame Kyiv; Ukrainian officials have repeatedly threatened to hit the 12-mile bridge
A major explosion severely damaged the bridge connecting Russia’s mainland to the occupied Crimean Peninsula, disrupting traffic on a crucial artery for the supply of fuel, military equipment and food to Russian troops fighting to hold ground in southern Ukraine.
The bridge, opened by President Vladimir Putin to great fanfare in 2018, was meant to symbolize the might of the Russian state and the permanence of Russia’s annexation of the peninsula four years earlier. Russia even released a feature movie about its construction.
Russia’s investigations committee said three people died after the early-morning explosion on Saturday of a truck on the bridge’s roadway next to a supply train that was carrying fuel. Some demolition experts who analyzed footage of the blast questioned the Russian version and said that the explosion must have come from under the bridge, caused either by an explosives-laden boat, manned or unmanned, or by shaped charges placed by divers.
Tony Spamer, a former British Army expert on bridge demolitions, said a truck bomb would have created a hole in the middle of bridge but wouldn’t have been sufficient to cut the reinforcing bar and cause the structure to collapse. “You’ve got to attack the whole width of the bridge. Looking at it, it looks like it was attacked from underneath. It’s a monster job,” he said.
Russia scrambled to launch ferry services as an alternative, a move made difficult by stormy weather. Crimean authorities said passenger traffic resumed Saturday afternoon on the two surviving lanes of the four-lane road bridge, and rail services should be restarted soon. Civilian flights to Crimea have been suspended since February.
David MacKenzie, a senior technical director at COWI Holding A/S, a Denmark-based company that designs and builds some of the world’s largest and longest bridges, said it would take several months for Russia to be able to fully restore the destroyed spans of the bridge, and that the ban on truck traffic is caused by concerns that the bridge’s substructure has also been damaged. Weight restrictions are also likely to be imposed on the railway bridge should it reopen, he said.
“A quite significant fire has taken place, and it will have an impact on the strength of the steel that is there,” Mr. MacKenzie said. “There is a very good chance that the steel on the top of the deck may well have been heated to temperatures well above the limits that the steel takes.”
Russian officials in Crimea were quick to blame Kyiv. “The Ukrainian vandals have managed to reach the Crimean bridge with their bloodied hands,” the speaker of Crimea’s legislature, Vladimir Konstantinov, wrote on social media. Other than ordering a commission of inquiry, Mr. Putin has so far remained silent on the incident, even as Russian lawmakers and politicians called for retribution.
While Ukrainian officials have repeatedly threatened to hit the strategic bridge in the past, there was no direct claim of responsibility from Kyiv. Senior Ukrainian officials, however, on Saturday expressed delight at the blow to Russian prestige.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 is considered illegal by virtually the entire international community, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly stated that he seeks to reclaim all Ukrainian territories seized by Russia.
Russia in recent days moved to annex four other regions of Ukraine where fierce fighting continues, while Mr. Putin ordered the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of reservists to shore up the crumbling Russian front lines, prompting an exodus of Russian men to neighboring countries.
Moscow on Saturday for the first time named an overall commander for the faltering campaign in Ukraine, Gen. Sergei Surovikin. Previously the head of Russia’s Aerospace Forces, he was this summer identified by the Russian Ministry of Defense as head of Group South, the military grouping that led the fighting to seize the southeastern city of Mariupol. He is a veteran of the Chechen campaign and a former commander of Russian forces in Syria.
Russian nationalists and personalities such as Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and Yevgeni Prigozhin, owner of the Wagner private military company, have blamed a rival general, Col. Gen. Aleksandr Lapin, commander of Group Center, for recent defeats that saw Russia lose thousands of square miles in the Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk regions. There was no word about Gen. Lapin’s fate.
Crimea, the home of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, has also become a focus for the Ukrainian war effort as its forces press farther south, especially in Kherson, where dozens of villages have been taken in recent days. Kyiv has attacked several high-profile targets in Crimea in recent months, striking a major Russian air base in Saky and a railway junction near the town of Dzhankoy. It has also used American-made Himars missiles to hit the Antonivsky bridge in Kherson, a main lifeline for Russian troops in the area.
The bridge over the Kerch Strait accounted for the bulk of fuel and food supplies to Crimea and represented the only way of traveling to and from the peninsula for ordinary Russians.
Some 50,000 Russian tourists are stranded in Crimea, according to the association of Russia’s tour operators. Authorities have asked resorts to extend the stay of tourists in the region, for which the businesses would be fully compensated, it said.
Long lines formed at gas stations in Crimea after the blast. The governor of Sevastopol on Saturday said he had imposed food rationing of 3 kilograms of bread or flour per person, equivalent to 6.6 pounds, and banned filling jerrycans with gas to prevent hoarding, but he quickly lifted the restrictions.
The peninsula has enough fuel for more than a month and enough food for two months, according to the Russian-appointed leader of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov. Repair work on the bridge will start immediately after the investigation concludes, he said.
Footage aired by Russian media from the Kerch Strait area showed that, as the fuel train burned on the railway track, two lanes of the highway caved into the sea, while the other two lanes appeared structurally damaged. Mr. Aksyonov didn’t provide a timeline for when the bridge might be fully restored.
The 12-mile bridge, built at a cost of nearly $4 billion, was the main logistics connection for the peninsula and for the parts of Ukraine’s Kherson and regions captured by Moscow in February and March.
Other road links with Crimea are available to Russia through occupied parts of southern Ukraine and the Donbas area in the east. However, they go through areas where Ukrainian insurgents operate or where Ukrainian artillery remains within range. There is no viable alternative connection by rail, the preferred transportation method of the Russian military. On Saturday, Ukraine used Himars missiles to destroy a railway hub used by the Russian military in the southern part of the Donetsk region.
Oleg Kryuchkov, an aide to Mr. Aksyonov, the Crimean leader, said food and fuel will continue to be provided to Crimea via this land corridor. Mr. Aksyonov called for calm. Russian authorities said a car ferry service was set to launch Sunday and food and heating stations for drivers were being deployed at the entrance to the bridge.
Russian officials in recent months repeatedly warned of severe consequences should Kyiv try to strike the bridge. Russia’s former President Dmitry Medvedev said in July that hitting Crimea would cause “an immediate judgment day.”
Ukraine’s resilient air defenses, however, make it impossible for Russian aircraft to go on bombing runs deep inside the country. While Russia has been using its dwindling reserve of cruise missiles and Iranian-made kamikaze drones to carry out such strikes on infrastructure targets for months, it hasn’t been able to cause any significant disruption to Ukraine’s military campaign. Western military analysts say that, by now, Russia doesn’t have much of an ability to escalate the conflict with conventional weapons, stirring concerns that Mr. Putin might opt to use tactical nuclear weapons—something the Russian leader has hinted at in recent weeks.
Pro-Kremlin analysts such as Alexei Dzermant said the apparent attack on the bridge showed that Ukraine was waging an “all-out war” while Russia so far had been engaged in a “halfhearted war.” Mr. Dzermant, who is affiliated with the Center for the Study and Development of Continental Integration in Eurasia, a think tank in Minsk, said Russia’s current approach to the conflict would lead to further setbacks.
Mr. Konstantinov, of the Crimea State Council, said the attack by Ukraine would clearly show Russians “with whom and for what we are fighting.”
Some Russian analysts said it was likely that Mr. Putin would play down the incident since the strike didn’t succeed in completely destroying the bridge. Others said that by showing its hand and just damaging the structure, Kyiv had provided Moscow with a chance to better prepare for a further attack on the bridge.
On VKontakte, Russia’s version of Facebook, there was an eruption of anti-Ukraine posts, with many calling on Mr. Putin to take stronger action against Kyiv.
“Shall we just shake a finger at them again?” asked a man who identified himself as Alexander Dorohkhin on VKontakte. “Maybe it’s time to test a Sarmat [missile] in Kyiv.”
There was also desperation in a query from Anna Voropinova as she asked on a Crimean VKontakte group page “how now to return to the mainland from Crimea ???????”
“Where to get information?” she asked. “What to do?”
In Kyiv, meanwhile, there was celebration. The Ukrainian mail service issued a special commemorative stamp, and Kyivites lined up Saturday afternoon to take photos by a billboard that had previously been installed on the city’s main avenue. It depicted a mock-up of explosions hitting the bridge.
People in Kyiv take selfies in front of artwork depicting explosions on the Crimean bridge.Photo: Vladyslav Musiienko/Reuters