welcome to bbc news. president putin has suffered an embarrassing setback in the war with ukraine, after a huge explosion on the only bridge linking russia with the crimean peninsula. the bridge partially collasped but has now reopened to light traffic. russia annexed crimea in 2014, and after occupying these regions of ukraine in red it s managed to establish a corridor up through southern and eastern ukraine. the kerch bridge, connecting russia to the crimean peninsula in the black sea, was an important supply route for sending russian troops and artillery into ukraine. the blast there is another humiliation for the kremlin, as our russia editor, steve rosenberg, reports. it is the bridge the kremlin built, steve rosenberg, reports. and it was under attack. steve rosenberg, reports. an explosion at dawn. steve rosenberg, reports. this was the result. steve rosenberg, reports. russian officials claim a lorry had been blown up here and that the fire then spread to a fuel
about the significance of the bridge being hit. it depends how quickly they repair the bridge. it is a huge symbolic setback because this bridge was mr putin s personal commitment to crimea. it opened in 2018, cost $3 billion, massively overpriced. one of his friends was in charge of the construction and he identified with this because this was a way of uniting the mainland of russia with what he took to be the mainland of crimea which was now going to be russian forever so the bridge is symbolically hugely important. in terms of logistics, the fact is, one carriageway seems to have survived this blast although it may only take light traffic and we don t know how bad the damage is to the railway grid above it. my guess is that although the russians will have a big motive to say that the bridge is reopen soon and all is fine, it will not reopen to military traffic which is very heavy so we will see how long it is before they can start to use the road and particularly the rail