Russia Scrambles to Reconnect Supply Lines to Crimea After Bridge Explosion

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his first public comments on the incident, blamed Ukraine and called it a “terrorist attack” aimed at civilian infrastructure.

“Its plotters, perpetrators, and masterminds are the Ukrainian security services,” Mr. Putin said Sunday in a televised recording of a meeting with his top federal investigative official.

Kyiv didn’t claim responsibility for the attack, though senior Ukrainian officials celebrated it on social media.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, responded to Mr. Putin’s accusation on Twitter, calling it cynical and pointing to Russia’s attack on residential areas of Zaporizhzhia.

“There is only one terrorist state here and the whole world knows who it is,” he said in the tweet.

Targeting the bridge would follow a game plan that Ukraine’s military has used effectively in recent months: disrupting Russian forces’ rear supply lines to deplete their strength and demoralize them before pushing ahead with an assault.

As fighting rages on the southern front—where Ukraine is attempting to dislodge Russians from territory they seized in the opening weeks of the war—Ukrainian forces have hit a series of Russian logistics centers and ammunition depots in the area.

On Saturday, Ukraine also used Himars rockets to destroy a railway hub used by the Russian military in the southern part of the Donetsk region, which could have served as another resupply route to the occupied south.

Using long-range Himars rocket systems supplied by the U.S., Ukraine has already disabled most of the Kherson region’s bridges across the Dnipro River, which separates the Russian-occupied Kherson city and its surroundings from other Russian-held territory.

“If they’re not able to repair the bridge and use it to the extent that they need to—and if they cut the land bridge—you can see this will be a very challenging situation to resupply,” said Ben Hodges, a retired U.S. lieutenant general who commanded the U.S. Army in Europe, of the situation in Crimea. “Not only Russian forces there but also the people that live there.”

The Russian military relies heavily on rail transport for its logistics, and the critical, direct rail line passes over the damaged bridge. “That railroad is essential for bringing in more heavy equipment or for getting it out,” said Mr. Hodges.

Ferry service would be less reliable and more vulnerable to drone strikes, he said, and Russia’s land bridge of occupied territory that connects southern Ukraine to mainland Russia is increasingly within range of Ukrainian artillery.

The bridge, opened by Mr. Putin to great fanfare in 2018, is also symbolically important—celebrated as a monument to the might of the Russian state and its aim of permanently holding on to the annexed Ukrainian territory.

Officials in Moscow said transport links across the bridge were gradually being restored and that alternative means of moving essential supplies—such as ferry services—would be found.

On Sunday, Russia’s Ministry of Transport said long-distance passenger and freight trains were again departing Crimea and crossing the bridge into Russia. Russian authorities didn’t say whether trains would begin moving from Russia into Crimea. Cars were also being permitted to cross the bridge, but it remained closed to trucks.

The ministry later in the day suggested that truck drivers use a land route through regions of Russian-occupied Ukraine. Mr. Putin signed a law last week to formally absorb those areas, but Moscow doesn’t fully control them. The route goes through Melitopol, in the Zaporizhzhia region, to Mariupol on the north coast of the Sea of Azov, and on to the port city of Taganrog in southwestern Russia.

Crimean authorities asked residents to not use the bridge unless absolutely necessary, because of its limited capacity, Russia’s state news agency, TASS, reported.

Russia also said it was restarting ferry service across the Kerch Strait separating Russia and Crimea to carry passengers and freight. Before the construction of the bridge, ferries were the main direct link connecting the two sides of the strait.

Experts said they were unsure whether the bridge remained structurally sound enough to support heavy vehicles.

David MacKenzie, a senior technical director at COWI Holding AS, a Denmark-based company that designs and builds some of the world’s largest and longest bridges, said it would take several months for Russia to be able to fully restore the damaged spans of the bridge.

Restrictions on truck and train traffic would likely remain because of concerns that the bridge’s substructure has been damaged, Mr. MacKenzie said.

The bridge explosion triggered outrage among some senior lawmakers, as well as ordinary Russians. But Russian state media sought to play down the event, refraining from calling it an attack and airing television interviews with cheerful train passengers expressing gratitude that service had been restored and voicing confidence in using the bridge.

The Russian strikes overnight on Zaporizhzhia killed at least 17 people and injured 40 others, according to Anatoly Kurtev, president of the city council. Dozens of apartment buildings were damaged or destroyed, and the death toll was expected to rise, authorities said.

Zaporizhzhia, which is about 30 miles from the front lines where Ukrainian and Russian forces are fighting, has become a constant target of Russian shelling in recent days. On Friday, another rocket attack on a residential area in the city also killed 17 people.

“The Russians are not able to respond on the battlefield and therefore hit the cities in the rear,” Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, wrote on Twitter Sunday morning.

Russian Defense Ministry officials didn’t immediately comment.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said the damage to the bridge wouldn’t permanently disrupt Russian supply lines, but is likely to cause significant problems in the short term.

“Russian forces will likely still be able to transport heavy military equipment via the railroad,” the institute wrote. “Russian officials will likely intensify security checks on all vehicles crossing the bridge, however, adding delays to the movement of Russian military equipment, personnel, and supplies to Crimea.”

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, speaking on ABC News’s “This Week” on Sunday, said Mr. Putin’s recent rhetoric on using nuclear weapons, combined with Russia’s losses on the battlefield, reflect the “high stakes” involved in Ukraine. He added that the U.S. remains committed to supporting Ukraine in its fight to recapture territory seized by Russia.

“What needs to happen is for the two sides to be able to sit down and negotiate and find a way out of this peacefully and diplomatically,” Mr. Kirby added. “Mr. Putin has shown no indications—zero, none—that he’s willing to do that.”

Mr. Kirby also said President Biden’s nuclear “armageddon” comments weren’t based on fresh intelligence or new indications that Mr. Putin has made a decision to use nuclear weapons. “Nor have we seen anything that would give us pause to reconsider our own strategic nuclear posture,” Mr. Kirby said.

Admiral Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described Mr. Putin as a “cornered animal,” and said because of that, the U.S. shouldn’t underestimate his willingness to use nuclear weapons or take other extreme measures.

“He’s more and more dangerous…That bridge was struck, which was logistically critical as well as very symbolic,” Mr. Mullen said.

—Vivian Salama contributed to this article.

Write to Ian Lovett at ian.lovett@wsj.com and Ann M. Simmons at ann.simmons@wsj.com