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Friday’s Coverage: Putin to Scapegoat Defense Minister Shoygu for Invasion’s Failure?

Source: Institute for the Study of War

UPDATE 1303 GMT:

Investigators have found four more civilians executed by occupying Russian forces.

The three women and a man were found in the basement of a house in recently-liberated Kuplyansk in the Kharkiv region in northeast Ukraine.

UPDATE 1258 GMT:

The Kremlin has named yet another overall commander for its Ukraine invasion — Sergei Surovikin, the former commander of Russia’s operations in Syria.

UPDATE 1256 GMT:

Footage from the damaged Kerch Bridge:

UPDATE 1223 GMT:

The death toll from Thursday’s Russian missile and drone strikes on Zaporizhzhia city in southern Ukraine has risen to 17, including a child.

The State emergency service said 12 people are hospitalized and 21 were rescued from rubble of two destroyed residential buildings and infrastructure.

UPDATE 1213 GMT:

The International Atomic Energy Agency has renewed its calls for a protection zone at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

IAEA head Rafael Grossi said, “The resumption of shelling, hitting the plant’s sole source of external power, is tremendously irresponsible.”

The shelling cut the power line that supplies cooling systems to the plant, which now depends on diesel generators.

Having converted the site — Europe’s largest nuclear complex — into a military base, Russia has rejected IAEA and UN calls to demilitarize and withdraw troops.

Grossi hopes to soon visit Russia and Ukraine to discuss the establishment of the protection zone.

UPDATE 1150 GMT:

At least of the spans of the Kerch Bridge have collapsed because of this morning’s explosion:

Russia’s Transport Ministry maintains it will restore rail traffic within five hours, with a “repair and recovery train” already on site.

Journalist Elizabeth Tsurkov notes that Russia boasted this summer that the Kerch Bridge was invulnerable:

Russian commentator Igor Korotchenko assured in August, “Naturally, the Crimean bridge has reliable air defence.” Today he is saying on State TV:

Russian officials say three people, all in the same car, were killed in the blast.

UPDATE 0925 GMT:

Ukraine’s Security Service SBU implicitly claimed the explosion that severely damaged the Kerch Bridge between Russia and occupied Crimea: “The bridge is burning beautifully at dawn. A nightingale is meeting the SBU in Crimea.”

Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security Council, juxtaposed the demolition and Vladimir Putin’s 70th birthday, with an image of the bridge alongside a video of Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” to John F. Kennedy:

David Arakhamia, the Parliamentary leader of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People party, wrote on Telegram:

Russian illegal construction is starting to fall apart and catch fire.

The reason is simple: if you build something explosive, then sooner or later it will explode.

And this is just the beginning. Of all things, reliable construction is not something Russia is particularly famous for.

UPDATE 0854 GMT:

Russian officials have added six citizens to the list of “foreign agents”, including rapper Oxxxymiron, science fiction writer Dmitry Glukhovsky, feminist politician Alena Popova, and journalist Irina Storozheva.

Oxxxymiron, the stage name of 37-year-old Miron Fyodorov, called Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine invasion a “catastrophe and a crime”. He has left the country, organizing concerts in support of Ukrainian refugees.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: An explosion has severely damaged the Kerch Bridge, the link between Russia and the occupied Crimea peninsula in southern Ukraine.

The detonation, heard for miles, just before 6 a.m. on Saturday. Half of the road bridge collapsed into the Kerch Strait. Fire surrounded train carriages on the parallel railway bridge.

The 19-km (12-mile) parallel bridges cross the Kerch Strait between Krasnodar in Russia and Crimea, seized by Russia in 2014. A treasured project of Vladimir Putin, the road bridge was opened by the Russian leader in 2018, and the railway bridge in 2020.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy suggested Kyiv’s forces had carried out the operation:

In an interview in August, Ukrainian commander Maj. Gen. Dmytro Marchenko highlighted the bridge as a priority target: “This is a necessary measure in order to deprive them of the opportunity to provide reserves and reinforce their troops from Russian territory.”

The road bridge was cleanly severed. The break, along with no sign of a missile strike, indicated that the link had been sabotaged. Video also suggested an attack with high explosives.

Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee supported that explanation, saying a truck bomb set ablaze seven railway carriages carrying fuel, causing a “partial collapse of two sections of the bridge”.

Facing an advancing Ukrainian counter-offensive, Russian forces in the occupied south now have only one railway supply line, which is now within range of Ukraine’s attacks.

Russia can still move supplies between southern Ukraine and Crimea by boat.

Since August, in preparation for its counter-offensive, Ukrainian forces have carried out a series of attacks on Russian positions in Crimea, even though it is more than 100 miles from the frontline in the Kherson region.

Blasts destroyed more than half of the warplanes of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet at the Saky base. The Fleet’s headquarters in Sevastopol was struck, and ammunition depots and electricity substations were hit.

See also Ukraine War, Day 179: Drone Strikes Russia’s Naval HQ in Crimea