Was Ukraine behind the Crimean bridge attack? Here's what we know

The Ukrainian military suggested the attack on the Crimean bridge could be some kind of provocation by Russia itself, but sources have reportedly said that Ukraine's security service was responsible.

The Crimean Bridge pictured in October 2022. The bridge, which was damaged last year, was attacked again on Monday. Source: Getty, AFP / STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images

KEY POINTS

• Vladimir Putin's pride project, the Crimean bridge, has been damaged again.
• Ukrainian media reported blasts, and Russian officials called it an "emergency situation".
• The parents of a girl were killed and their daughter was injured in a passenger car.

Two people were killed and their daughter was seriously injured after blasts on the Crimean bridge.

The 19-kilometre road and rail bridge is major supply artery for Russian troops fighting in Ukraine and has been a pride infrastructure project of President Vladimir Putin, who drove a Mercedes across the bridge in 2022 after it was repaired following an explosion.

What happened during the 'emergency' situation?

Images from the Reuters news agency from the scene showed no traffic crossing the bridge which links Russia to Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Unverified imagery showed twisted metal barriers, debris and a damaged car on the bridge. Dashcam footage showed drivers braking sharply shortly after the incident. The extent of the damage was not immediately clear.

Russian officials called it an "emergency" situation. Russia's Grey Zone channel, a Telegram channel affiliated with the Wagner mercenary group, reported two strikes on the bridge at 03:04am and 03:20am (10:04am and 10:20am AEST).

Two people were killed and their daughter was seriously injured after blasts on the Crimean bridge. Source: Getty / Crimea24TV/AFP

Sergei Aksyonov, a Russia-installed governor, said the emergency occurred on the 145th pillar of the bridge. He did not provide any further details.

The RBC-Ukraine news agency reported that explosions were heard on the bridge.

The parents of a girl were killed and their daughter was injured in a passenger car.

"The girl was injured," Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the Belgorod region said in a message on the Telegram messaging app. "The hardest thing is that her parents died, dad and mum."

"No words can calm the pain of loss here," he said. The girl was being treated in intensive care.

Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesperson for Ukraine's Odesa military administration, posted a photo on his Telegram account of what seemed to show part of the bridge broken. It was not immediately clear whether that was related to any attack.

Who was behind the attack?

Russian officials said Ukraine was behind what they called a "terrorist" attack on the bridge - hours before the Kremlin said it would not extend a United Nations-brokered deal that allowed the export of grain via the Black Sea.

The Ukrainian military suggested the attack could be some kind of provocation by Russia itself but Ukrainian media cited unidentified sources as saying that Ukraine's security service was behind the incident.

Ukraine's government did not comment on the incident and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the navy declined to say whether they were involved.

The 19-kilometre road and rail bridge has been a pride infrastructure project of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Source: Getty, AFP / STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images

Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne, online publication Ukrainska Pravda and The New Voice of Ukraine media outlet cited one or more sources saying the navy and the SBU were behind the incident, in which Russia said two people were killed.

All three media outlets quoted at least one source as saying sea-borne drones had been deployed against the bridge.

Suspilne quoted a navy spokesman as saying he had no such information and urging the broadcaster to wait for official announcements.

A spokesperson for Ukraine's southern military command, Natalia Humeniuk, said the incident on the Crimean Bridge could be an act of provocation on Moscow's side.

"The creation of such provocations, which the occupying authorities of Crimea report immediately very loudly, is a typical way of solving problems by authorities of Crimea and the aggressor country," Humeniuk told the national broadcaster Rada.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (second from left) at the Crimean bridge in December 2022. Source: AAP, AP / Mikhail Metzel

In comments to the RBC Ukraine media outlet, an SBU spokesperson quoted the security agency's chief, Vasyl Malyuk, as having said in previous interviews that it was justified in war to "cut off the enemy's logistical routes" and that the bridge was used as a Russian military supply route.

The SBU posted a message on the Telegram messaging app showing a picture of an explosion on the bridge last October and recast a Ukrainian folk song to read: "Nightingale, my dear brother, the bridge 'has gone to sleep' again."

Presidential political adviser Mykhailo Podolyak welcomed news of the incident, without saying how it happened.

"Any illegal structures used to deliver Russian instruments of mass murder are necessarily short-lived... regardless of the reasons for the destruction," he wrote on Twitter.

Why is the Crimean bridge so significant?

The Crimean bridge, Europe's longest, was damaged by an explosion last October, in an attack that the Kremlin said had been orchestrated by Ukrainian security forces. Ukraine admitted only indirectly to the attack months later.

Putin's ally Arkady Rotenberg's company built the vast structure, which is Europe's longest bridge. Putin has long lauded the project, boasting at one point that Russian Tsars and Soviet leaders had dreamed of building it but never did.

Crimea was transferred from Soviet Russia to Soviet Ukraine in 1954 by then-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and recognised by Russia in 1994 after the collapse of the USSR. Ukraine has vowed to return Crimea.

The Crimean peninsula has been a major and cherished holiday destination for Russians, especially after Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and travelling to the West became more difficult for many Russians.

George Barros, an analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, said on Twitter that if the bridge were seriously damaged it would significantly impact Russian supply lines.

"Russia will only have one ground supply line - the coastal highway on the Sea of Azov - to sustain (or evacuate) its tens of thousands of troops in occupied Kherson & Crimea if UKR manages to degrade/destroy the bridge," said Barros.