<div style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b>Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine of attacking the bridge to Russian-annexed Crimea, saying that it was an "act of terrorism".</b></span><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">President Putin said Ukraine's intelligence forces had aimed to destroy a critically important piece of Russia's civil infrastructure.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He was speaking at a meeting with the head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Alexander Bastrykin.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Officials say three people were killed in the blast on the bridge.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The victims were in a nearby car when a lorry blew up, Russian officials say.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"There is no doubt, this is an act of terrorism aimed at destroying Russia's critical civilian infrastructure," Mr Putin said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Its authors, perpetrators and beneficiaries are the security services of Ukraine."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mr Bastrykin said that citizens of Russia and some foreign states had aided preparations for the attack.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">According to Mr Bastrykin, investigators have established that the truck which they say blew up travelled through Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia, North Ossetia and Krasnodar Territory.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He has ordered an investigation into the incident which brought down sections of the roadway.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Ukrainian officials have not indicated that their forces were behind the attack.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But an adviser to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, denied Mr Putin's accusation.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He wrote that there is "only one terrorist state here" and that the "whole world knows who it is".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Does Putin accuse Ukraine of terrorism? It looks too cynical even for Russia," he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged the incident in his nightly address, saying: "Today was not a bad day and mostly sunny on our state's territory."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Unfortunately, it was cloudy in Crimea. Although it was also warm," he added.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Russian authorities partially re-opened the roadway part of the bridge hours after the attack but for light traffic only.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The railway part of the bridge - where oil tankers caught fire - has also reopened.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The 19km (12-mile) bridge, the longest in Europe, is an important supply route for Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Russia has used the bridge to move military equipment, ammunition, and personnel from Russia to battlefields in southern Ukraine.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It was opened by Mr Putin in 2018, four years after Russia's annexation of Crimea.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Security camera footage released on social media showed a truck - allegedly from the Russian city of Krasnodar, an hour's drive from the crossing - moving west across the bridge at the time of the explosion.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The footage shows a huge fireball erupting just behind - and to one side - of the truck as it begins to climb an elevated section of the bridge.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The speed with which the truck bomb theory started to spread in Russian circles was suspicious. It suggested the Kremlin preferred an act of terrorism to a more alarming possibility: that this was an audacious act of sabotage carried out by Ukraine.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I've seen plenty of large vehicle-borne IEDs [improvised explosive devices] in my time," a former British army explosives expert told me. "This does not look like one."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A more plausible explanation, he said, is a massive explosion below the bridge - probably delivered using some kind of clandestine maritime drone.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Bridges are generally designed to resist downwards loads on the deck and a certain amount of side loading from the wind," he said. "They are not generally engineered to resist upward loads. I think this fact was exploited in the Ukrainian attack."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Some observers have noted that in one of the other security camera videos, something that looks like the bow wave of a small boat appears next to one of the bridge supports, a split second before the explosion. BBC</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>