Russian authorities reported on Monday that a family from the Belgorod area of Russia lost their lives and their child was hurt when the Crimea Bridge was destroyed in a “emergency incident”. However, there were explosions on the bridge, according to Ukrainian media.
Two strikes were reported on the bridge at 03:04 a.m. (0004 GMT) and 03:20 a.m., according to the Wagner mercenary group’s connected Russian Telegram channel, Grey Zone.
Russian officials informed Reuters that traffic was stopped on the Russian-built bridge connecting Russia to Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014. This was in the midst of claims of explosions. A vital supply route for Russian troops in Ukraine is the Crimea Bridge.
“This morning we all started with information about the emergency that happened on the Crimean Bridge. We all saw a video on the internet of a damaged car with Belgorod number plates,” Belgorod’s governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote.
“The girl was injured, moderately injured. The hardest thing is that her parents died, dad and mom,” he said.
The emergency, according to Sergei Aksyonov, a governor placed by Russia, happened on the 145th pillar of the bridge connecting the Crimean peninsula to Russia’s Krasnodar. He said nothing more and left it as that.
According to Russia’s transport ministry, the bridge that is closest to the Crimean Peninsula has road damage. They claimed that the pillars were unharmed. According to Reuters, it did not specify what caused the damage.
On the bridge, explosions were reportedly audible, according to the RBC-Ukraine news agency.
The military administration of Odesa in Ukraine’s Serhiy Bratchuk uploaded a picture of what appeared to be a portion of the bridge broken on his Telegram account. Whether that was connected to an assault or not was not immediately obvious.