(PresidentialHill.com)- Last Saturday, an explosion damaged the Kerch Bridge that connects Russia to its annexed territory of Crimea, temporarily halting all traffic.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, called the explosion “a terrorist act” of “sabotage” committed by the “criminal” regime in Kyiv. He said Russia must respond by “killing terrorists.”
Russia’s State Duma condemned the attack calling it “a declaration of war without rules.”
While Ukraine has not taken responsibility for the blast, believed to have been caused by a truck explosion, Ukrainian officials did celebrate it with snarky one-liner remarks on Twitter.
In a video address on Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin also described Saturday’s bomb blast as “an act of terrorism.”
In response to Putin’s remarks, Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, tweeted that Putin accusing Ukraine of terrorism sounded “too cynical even for Russia.”
Early Monday, a series of explosions rocked Kyiv after months of relative calm. Putin boasted that the strikes were an act of revenge for Saturday’s explosion.
And on Wednesday, the FSB, Russia’s domestic intelligence service, announced that it had arrested eight people in connection with the explosion that killed three people and temporarily halted train and vehicle traffic.
In its press release, the FSB accused the Ukrainian military and its chief Kyrylo Budanov of being behind the attack. It also said it had detained five Russian citizens, three Ukrainian citizens, and an Armenian for being involved in the operation.
According to the FSB, the device used in the explosion was hidden in rolls of construction film that were shipped from the Black Sea port of Odesa to Bulgaria in early August. It was then moved through Georgia and Armenia before arriving in Russia earlier this month.
The FBS maintains that Ukrainian agents were controlling the entire operation.
Andrii Yusov, a press officer with Ukraine’s military intelligence, refused to comment on the FSB’s accusations, saying in a statement that they would not respond to “statements made by terrorists.”
