An incident occurred on an important bridge connecting Crimea to the Russian region of Krasnodar and traffic was interrupted there, said on the night of Sunday July 16 to Monday July 17 the Russian governor of the annexed peninsula of Crimea.
“Traffic was halted on the Crimean Bridge. An emergency occurred in the area of ??the 145th pillar from the Krasnodar Territory, located in southwestern Russia, Sergei Aksionov said on Telegram, without specifying the nature of the incident. “Law enforcement and all relevant services are hard at work,” he added, asking motorists to choose an alternative route.
A coordination center has been set up within a Crimean ministry, Russian state agency TASS reported, citing local authorities. Crimea, a peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014, serves as a rear base for Russian forces, in particular for sending reinforcements and maintaining equipment. The few bridges connecting the peninsula to occupied southern Ukraine are essential to the conduct of Moscow’s military operations.
Inaugurated in 2018, the bridge that spans the Kerch Strait was damaged in October 2022 by a powerful explosion attributed by the Russian authorities to a truck booby-trapped by the Ukrainian secret services. kyiv had denied being at the origin of this explosion.
In June, the Chongar bridge, linking annexed Crimea to a partially occupied region of southern Ukraine, was hit by a Ukrainian strike, according to Russian authorities. The head of administration for the occupied part of the Kherson region later stated that it was “no longer usable for traffic” for the time being.