According to Interfax, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Wednesday that it has detained five Russians, three Ukrainian and Armenian citizens, and one resident of Georgia in connection with the explosion that destroyed the Crimea bridge last Saturday.
The Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, according to the FSB, and its head Kyrylo Budanov, were behind the explosion.
Although some Ukrainian authorities have praised the explosion’s damage, Ukraine has not formally acknowledged its role in the explosion.
One piece of the twelve-mile-long bridge was damaged by the explosion, momentarily stopping traffic. Several gasoline tanks on a railway from neighbouring southern Russia headed for the annexation peninsula were also damaged.
The bridge, a high-profile construction project that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally inaugurated in 2018, had proved logistically essential to his military operation as supplies were sent via it to Russian forces fighting in south Ukraine.
Russian soldiers bombarded Ukrainian cities with a large number of missile strikes, damaging power plants. Putin claimed that the attacks were punishment for the Crimea bridge explosion, which he said had been planned by Ukraine’s secret services, at a televised meeting of Russia’s Security Council on Monday.
