Introduction

At least two people were killed and another injured Monday in a Ukrainian attack on the Kerch bridge that connects Crimea with mainland Russia.

Details of the Attack

Blasts were reported before dawn on the 19-kilometer (12-mile) road and rail bridge, an artery for Russian troops fighting in Ukraine and a prestige project personally opened by President Vladimir Putin.

Unverified imagery showed a section of road on the bridge had split and tilted to one side with metal barriers buckled. Dashcam footage showed drivers braking sharply shortly after the incident. Traffic was halted.

Consequences of the Attack

Just hours after the attack, Moscow said that it had halted participation in a landmark U.N.-brokered deal that allowed Ukrainian grain to be exported through the Black Sea.

Russian officials said Ukraine was behind what they called a “terrorist” attack on the bridge.

The Ukrainian military, on the other hand, 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.

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

“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.

Russian prosecutors said Ukrainian security services were behind the attack – which they cast as terrorism.

Russia blamed Ukraine for an attack on the bridge last October, saying it was organized by Ukrainian military intelligence and its director, Kyrylo Budanov. Ukraine admitted only indirectly to the attack months later.

After the October attack, Russia launched strikes against Ukrainian cities including power supplies in retaliation. Putin ordered the bridge repaired and even drove across it.

Halting of the Grain Deal

The Kremlin, in the meantime, said the halting of the agreement, brokered by the United Nations and Türkiye, to combat a global food crisis worsened by Russia’s invasion of its neighbor, had nothing to do with the bridge attack.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the parts of the Black Sea grain deal package relating to Russia were not fulfilled and therefore it was ceasing effect.

The deal, he said, had ceased to be valid today and was halted. Russia, he said, would return to the deal once the conditions relating to Russia were fulfilled.

The deal was due to expire on Monday.

Sergei Mironov, leader of the A Just Russia party in Russia’s parliament, said Moscow should respond by destroying Ukrainian infrastructure.

“That is what we need to do, and not discuss a grain deal that helps Kyiv’s rulers and their Western masters line their pockets. There can be no grain deal after another terrorist attack,” he said on Telegram.

Russia agreed a year ago to sign the Black Sea grain deal which allowed Ukraine to resume shipping food from its southern ports despite the war.

Serious damage to the bridge would undermine Russian supply lines while potentially stranding tens of thousands of Russian tourists in Crimea.

Significance of the Kerch Bridge

The bridge, Europe’s longest, was built by a company controlled by Putin ally Arkady Rotenberg. Putin has long lauded the project, boasting at one point that Russian Tsars and Soviet leaders had dreamed of building it but never did.

The Crimean peninsula has long been a cherished vacation destination for Russians, especially after Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and traveling to the West became much more difficult for Russians.

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

Footage taken from a train crossing the bridge showed passengers gasping as they saw the damage to the road.

“It is just awful! It is crazy,” said one of the passengers.

In recent weeks, traffic jams to the entrance of the bridge went for kilometers on a daily basis as Russians went on holiday.

On Monday morning, the traffic jam ran for kilometers before police directed vehicles away from the bridge. Social media accounts showed cars lined up on the bridge and its entrance.

The Russian-backed administration of the Crimean peninsula urged residents not to travel via the bridge.

Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-appointed governor of Kherson, said Russian tourists would be able to travel overland via the Russian-controlled regions of southern Ukraine to Crimea.