Ukraine war: 17 dead in Russian attack on Zaporizhzhia apartment buildings

A Russian attack on Zaporizhzhia overnight struck apartment buildings and killed at least 17 people, a top official in the Ukrainian city said on Sunday.

The city has been repeatedly struck in recent weeks and it is in the Ukrainian-controlled part of a region that Russian president Vladimir Putin annexed in violation of international law last week.

City council secretary Anatoliy Kurtev said the city was struck by rockets overnight, at least five private houses were destroyed and around 40 were damaged.

The attack came after an explosion on Saturday caused the partial collapse of a bridge linking the Crimean Peninsula with Russia, damaging an important supply artery for the Kremlin’s faltering war effort in southern Ukraine and hitting a towering symbol of Russian power in the region.

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Following the blast which Russian authorities said was caused by a truck bomb, the head of the foreign affairs committee in the Russian parliament’s lower house, said “consequences will be imminent” if Ukraine was responsible.

[ Three dead after Crimea bridge blast, Russia says, as Putin deals with further setbacks ]

And Sergei Mironov, leader of the Just Russia faction, said Russia should respond by attacking key Ukrainian infrastructure.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly threatened to strike the bridge and some lauded the destruction, but Kyiv stopped short of claiming responsibility.

The bombing came a day after Russian president Vladimir Putin turned 70, dealing him a humiliating blow that could lead him to up the ante in his war on Ukraine.

In another potential setback for Putin, a Kremlin-backed official in Kherson, one of four Russia-annexed regions in Ukraine, announced a partial evacuation of civilians.

Kirill Stremousov, deputy chief of Kherson’s Russian-appointed administration, told Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti agency that young children and their parents, as well as older people, could be relocated to two southern Russian regions.

Russian legislators urged Putin to declare a “counterterrorism operation” in response. Such a move could be used by the Kremlin to further broaden the powers of security agencies, ban rallies, tighten censorship, introduce restrictions on travel and expand a partial mobilisation that the president ordered last month.

Russia’s national anti-terrorism committee said a truck bomb set alight seven railway carriages carrying fuel, resulting in a “partial collapse of two sections of the bridge”.

A man and a woman who were travelling in a vehicle across the bridge were killed by the explosion and their bodies were recovered, Russia’s investigative committee said. It did not provide details on the third victim or the truck driver.

The blast occurred even though all vehicles driving across the bridge undergo automatic checks for explosives by state-of-the-art control systems, drawing a stream of critical comments from Russian war bloggers.

The truck was owned by a resident of the Krasnodar region in southern Russia, Russia’s investigative committee said. It said investigators arrived at his home as part of the inquiry and are looking at the truck’s route and other details.

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The 19.3km (12-mile) bridge across the Kerch Strait linking the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov opened in 2018 and is the longest in Europe.

The £3.2 billion (€3.6 billion) project is a tangible symbol of Moscow’s claims on Crimea and has provided an essential link to the peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Crimea holds symbolic value for Russia and is key to sustaining its military operations in southern Ukraine. While Russia seized areas north of Crimea early on during the invasion and built a land corridor to it along the Sea of Azov, Ukraine is pressing a counteroffensive to reclaim them.

The Russian defence ministry said troops in the south were receiving necessary supplies through the land corridor and by sea. The energy ministry said Crimea has enough fuel for 15 days and it was working on ways to replenish stock.

The bridge has train and road sections. The blast and fire caused the collapse of one of the two links of the road bridge, while another link was intact.

The Russian transport ministry said train traffic across the bridge would start again shortly after quick repair works.

Passenger ferry links between Crimea and the Russian mainland were expected to restart on Sunday.