KHARKIV, Ukraine — Russian authorities said Saturday that a truck bomb caused a fire and the collapse of part of a bridge connecting Russian-annexed Crimea with Russia.
Russia’s National Counter-Terrorism Committee said the truck bomb set seven rail cars carrying fuel on fire, leading to the “partial collapse of two sections of the bridge”. The commission did not immediately apportion blame.
THIS IS UPDATED NEWS. Earlier AP story follows below.
KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian state media reported Saturday that a fire broke out on the bridge connecting mainland Russia to the Russian-controlled Crimean Peninsula, hours after powerful explosions rocked the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
RIA-Novosti and the TASS news agency quoted local Russian official Oleg Kryuchkov as saying that an object believed to be a fuel storage tank had caught fire and that traffic on the bridge had been halted. He said the section’s “floating arches” were not damaged and that work to put out the fire was ongoing.
Images shared on social media showed fire and damage to the bridge. The authenticity of the reports and images cannot be immediately verified.
The fire broke out hours after explosions rocked the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv early Saturday, sending huge plumes of smoke into the sky and triggering a series of secondary explosions.
Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said on Telegram that the early morning explosions were the result of rocket strikes in the city center. He said the blasts caused fires in one of the city’s medical facilities and a non-residential building. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
The blasts came hours after Russia focused attacks in its increasingly troubling invasion of Ukraine on areas it has illegally annexed, while the death toll from earlier rocket strikes on residential buildings in the southern city of Zaporozhye rose to 14.
On Friday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to human rights organizations in Russia and Ukraine, as well as to an activist jailed in Belarus, an ally of Moscow.
Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the commission, said the honor went to “three outstanding defenders of human rights, democracy and peaceful coexistence”, although it was seen by many as a rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his behavior in the most worst armed conflict in Europe since World War II.
Putin signed documents on Wednesday to illegally declare four regions of Ukraine as Russian territory, including the Zaporizhia region, home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, whose reactors were shut down last month.
The move was foreshadowed by Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014, which was carried out after the peninsula’s supposed residents voted from Moscow to join Russia. The move was widely condemned and prompted sanctions from the US and the European Union.
The 19-kilometer (12-mile) bridge across the Kerch Strait connects Russia’s Taman Peninsula with Crimea.
Russia opened the first part of the section to road traffic in May 2018. The parallel bridge to rail traffic opened the following year.
The $3.6 billion project is a tangible symbol of Moscow’s claims to Crimea. It was Russia’s only land link to the peninsula until Russian forces seized more Ukrainian territory at the northern end of the Sea of Azov in heavy fighting, particularly around the city of Mariupol, earlier this year.
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Adam Schreck reported from Kyiv. Francisco Seco contributed to this report from Kharkiv.
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