Ukraine braces for retaliation after an attack on the bridge from Crimea to Russia

THE KERCH BRIDGE, linking the occupied Crimean peninsula to Russia, opened in May 2018 to great fanfare. It cost $3.7bn to build. President Vladimir Putin was the bridge’s first official customer, driving at the front of a column of orange trucks. On the morning of October 8th, just a day after the president’s 70th birthday, the focus turned to a different truck: a white vehicle, which, according to local investigators, was carrying a bomb that ripped through at least two sections of road bridge and apparently set ablaze seven rail tankers and part of the parallel railway bridge that they were on.

Much about the incident is still unclear. The ecstatic delight in Ukraine is not. By noon, the internet was ablaze with memes celebrating the partial destruction of a prominent symbol of Russian occupation. Oleksiy Danilov, the country’s security chief, posted a cheeky video of the damaged bridge, alongside Marilyn Monroe’s “Happy Birthday” ode to JFK. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, said it was just the beginning of Ukrainian ambitions for Crimea: “Everything illegal must be destroyed….everything that is stolen must be returned.”