Russia tells fleeing Crimeans to exit via land corridor shelled 22 times

Russian-installed officials in Crimea told tourists and residents who began to flee the Black Sea peninsula after an attack on the Kerch bridge to exit via a land corridor that has been shelled at least 22 times in the past month, according to a report.

Thousands of people began to leave Crimea on Monday, after the attack on the bridge that connects the annexed territory to Russia caused part of the structure to collapse, halting road traffic.

Russian authorities advised people seeking to depart quickly to take roads through the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, which adds hundreds of miles to their journeys and creates a risk that travelers could become caught up in shelling.

“I ask residents and guests of the peninsula to refrain from travel on the Crimea bridge and with the aim of safety choose an alternative overland route through the new regions,” said Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-installed head of Crimea, referring to the the four Russian-annexed regions of Ukraine—the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia, which Ukraine has pledged to recapture in a counteroffensive.

Crimea borders Kherson in southern Ukraine, and the southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia is also located nearby.

Verstka, an independent Russian news outlet that was founded shortly after the conflict began, said that the land corridor through the four regions to Crimea was shelled at least 22 times by Ukraine’s armed forces in the past 30 days. The shelling was most frequent in Melitopol city in the Zaporizhzhia region, the port city of Berdyansk in the same region, and Mariupol in the eastern Donetsk region.

The news outlet noted that the danger of getting caught up in shelling is not the only problem for those fleeing Crimea. It said Russians who have traveled along this land corridor say on the Telegram messaging app that immediately after the checkpoint on the border of Russia’s southern Rostov region and Ukraine’s Donetsk region, “internet completely disappears.”

“Travelers will have to travel directly through Mariupol, where ‘every second house has been destroyed’ and this is a ‘picture not for children’,” Verstka reported, also referring to “high fuel prices, poor quality of roads and checkpoints, as well as a large number of armed military personnel.”

Monday’s attack on the Kerch Strait bridge damaged a key supply route for Russia’s forces. Several Telegram channels, including Shot, Baza, and Astra, published unverified pictures and videos of the destruction, showing the collapse of part of the bridge and damaged vehicles.

The road and rail bridge, built after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, was previously damaged in an explosion in October 2022.

A spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern military command, Natalia Humeniuk, said early on Monday the incident could be an act of provocation from Russia.

At the same time, several Ukrainian media outlets, including Ukrainska Pravda, cited an unnamed source in Ukraine’s Security Service as saying that the attack on the Crimean bridge was a special operation by the Security Service of Ukraine and naval forces.

Ukraine’s minister for digital transformation later said that the bridge was struck by “naval drones.”

“Today the Crimean bridge was blown up by naval drones,” Mykhailo Fedorov said on Telegram. “It is better to act, not to reveal photos of our own production facilities and to supply the defense forces.”

Newsweek has contacted the foreign ministries of Ukraine and Russia for comment.

Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, said that a man and a woman from the the region’s Novooskolsky district died in an “emergency” on the Crimean bridge, and that their daughter was injured.

On Tuesday morning, Russian authorities said road traffic partially resumed across the bridge, opening up undamaged lanes for two-way traffic, and allowing vehicles to take turns in moving in each direction.

“As we reported to [Russian President Vladimir Putin] today, we prepared the bridge for launch as soon as possible,” Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said on his Telegram channel.

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