1/2
A car drives on the Crimean Bridge May, 15, 2018, prior to its opening ceremony. On Monday morning, Russian officials said it came under attack by Ukraine, resulting in two people dead and a third injured. File Photo by Alexander Nemenov/EPA-EFE
July 17 (UPI) — A mother and father from Russia’s Belgorod region were killed and their daughter was injured in an undescribed Monday morning incident on the strategically important Crimean Bridge, said Russian officials who blame Ukraine and vow to retaliate.
The cause of the parents’ deaths and the halt in traffic on the Crimean Bridge that connects Russia with Ukraine’s Kremlin-occupied Crimean Peninsula was not immediately clear, but Vladimir Konstantinov, chair of the State Council of the Republic of Crimea, blamed it on “the terrorist regime in Kyiv.”
“Our secretary of defense has promised strikes against criminal decision-making centers,” he said in a statement on Telegram.
Russia’s Ministry of Transportation reported that the bridge was damaged and that vehicle traffic has come to a halt but railway traffic was still able to function.
The bridge, also known as the Kerch Strait Bridge, was opened by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2018, connecting Russia’s Krasnodar region with the Crimean Peninsula, which the Kremlin annexed four years prior.
Ukraine has not taken responsibility for the supposed attack, but Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the head of the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said on Twitter that “all illegal structures used to deliver Russian instruments of mass murder are necessarily short-lived… regardless of the reasons for the destruction.”
The victims of the bridge incident were identified by Belgorod Oblast Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov, who said on Telegram they were from Novooskolsky district and that the girl was only moderately injured.
Sergey Aksyonov, who is the Russia-appointed head of Crimea, instructed residents of the peninsula to not travel on the bridge and find other transportation routes.
According to Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation has launched a “criminal case of a terrorist attack” in connection to the bridge incident.
The ministry said in a statement that the apparent attack damaged a section of the bridge and killed two civilians and injured a third as they were attempting to cross the structure in a vehicle.
In October, three people died in an explosion on the bridge that severely damaged the structure.
