President Vladimir Putin’s flagship bridge to Crimea was severely damaged in a blast that hit a fuel train and caused the partial collapse of the only road link running from the Russian mainland to the Black Sea peninsula that Moscow annexed in 2014.
Local authorities raced on Saturday to reopen one lane of the Kerch Strait Bridge to automobile traffic with full security checks, and vowed that rail services would resume.
The bridge is critical for the Kremlin to resupply its forces in Crimea and in the southern Kherson region of Ukraine, where Russian troops are facing a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
