KRYVYI RIH, Ukraine — A fireball erupted on Saturday on the sole bridge linking the Crimean Peninsula to Russia, causing a section of the bridge to collapse and imperiling the primary supply route for Russian troops fighting in the south of Ukraine.
The 12-mile-long Kerch Strait Bridge has become an important symbol of the claims that Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, makes to the peninsula, which his forces illegally seized from Ukraine in 2014. Mr. Putin presided over the opening of the bridge in 2018, personally driving a truck across.
The extent of the damage was difficult to immediately assess, though any impediment to traffic on the bridge could have a profound effect on Russia’s ability to wage war in southern Ukraine. The Russian Railways company said all trains to and from Crimea have been temporarily canceled, the state news agency Tass reported.
The bridge is the only military supply route linking mainland Russia with the Crimean Peninsula. Without it, the Russian military will be severely limited in its ability to bring fuel, equipment and ammunition to Russian units fighting an increasingly intense battle for the control of southern Ukraine.
The peninsula also holds special meaning for Mr. Putin, who has told his people that Crimea is a “sacred place” and Russia’s “holy land.”
Videos showed intense flames and a large plume of black smoke billowing off the railroad section of the bridge. At least part of the automobile section, which runs parallel, appeared to have collapsed.
Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee said in a statement that a truck had exploded on the bridge, igniting seven fuel cisterns being pulled by train on a parallel railroad crossing headed in the direction of Crimea and causing two car spans to partially collapse. While there were no immediate claims of responsibility, Russian and Ukrainian officials indicated that the fire was no accident.
The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, referred to the episode as an “emergency” in a statement on Saturday, without assessing who was behind it. He said that Mr. Putin, who had celebrated his 70th birthday on Friday, had been briefed.
“The president directed the prime minister to form a government commission to find out the causes of the incident and eliminate the consequences as soon as possible,” Mr. Peskov said, according to Russian state media.
Occupation officials in Crimea left little doubt about who they thought was responsible.
“Ukrainian vandals were able to reach the Crimean bridge with their bloody hands,” said Vladimir Konstantinov, the head of Crimea’s Kremlin-installed Parliament.
Ukrainian officials did not immediately comment on the cause of the fire, though senior officials have said in the past that the bridge would be a legitimate target for a Ukrainian strike.
“Crimea, the bridge, the beginning,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, wrote in a Twitter post on Saturday. “Everything illegal, must be destroyed. Everything stolen returned to Ukraine. All Russian occupiers expelled.”
A senior Ukrainian military official did not deny that Ukrainian forces were behind the attack but would not confirm it.
“All I can say is that an echelon with fuel intended to supply occupation forces in the south of Ukraine was passing over the bridge,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he did not have permission to speak to the news media.
The official added: “Putin should be happy. Not everyone gets such an expensive present on their birthday.”
In recent weeks, military traffic heading across the bridge into Crimea has increased, as Russia has raced tanks and artillery equipment to the front lines in the Kherson Region, a fertile slice of southern Ukraine that the Kremlin’s forces occupied in the first weeks of the war.
Last week, Ukrainian forces stepped up counteroffensive operations in the region, seizing back significant amounts of land in an effort to drive Russian forces east across the Dnipro River and liberate the city of Kherson, the only regional Ukrainian capital that Russian forces control.
Oleg Kryuchkov, adviser to the head of the peninsula’s Russian occupation government, said on his Telegram channel that emergency workers had set up aid stations on the bridge for stranded drivers.
Maria Varenikova contributed reporting from Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine.
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