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Bridge blast accusation and Zaporizhzhia strike, 9 October 2022
Summary
A look back at a day when Moscow assigned blame for the Crimean Bridge explosion and a missile attack hit a residential building in Zaporizhzhia.
What did Moscow say about the Crimean Bridge explosion, and what was happening on the ground in Ukraine on 9 October 2022? The day brought a formal accusation from the Russian president and, in Zaporizhzhia, another deadly missile attack.
The accusation over the bridge
On 9 October 2022, Russian president Vladimir Putin formally accused Ukraine, and specifically the Security Service of Ukraine, of being behind the explosion on the Crimean Bridge. He called it an act of terrorism. The blast, reported on 8 October, had set off a fire and caused the partial collapse of a road section of the Kerch Strait Bridge. Three people were killed.
The formal accusation went further than the first public account. On 8 October the cause was described as unknown, while a Russian investigative committee said a Ukrainian truck bomb was responsible. By 9 October the Russian leader had named a specific Ukrainian agency.
Zaporizhzhia under fire
The same day, a Russian missile attack on a residential building in Zaporizhzhia killed at least 13 people and injured 89 others. The strike came after an earlier shelling of a residential area in the same city. On 8 October the death toll from that Thursday's attack had risen to 17 civilians, including a child. Together the reports showed civilians in Zaporizhzhia bearing the brunt of Russian fire across several days.
Other threads from the weekend
On 8 October, a Ukrainian immigration centre denied visa extensions to Iranian students. The move was made in retaliation for Russia's use of Iranian drones during the invasion, and it linked the battlefield to a wider diplomatic dispute.
On 7 October, the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize went jointly to Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski, the Russian human rights society Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights organisation the Center for Civil Liberties. The Norwegian Nobel Committee's citation said the laureates represent civil society in their home countries. It said they had promoted the right to criticise power and protect citizens' fundamental rights, and had made an outstanding effort to document war crimes, human rights abuses and the abuse of power.
What the day showed
The contrast was sharp. Russia's leadership moved to attribute the bridge explosion to Ukrainian security services and framed it as terrorism. In Zaporizhzhia, rescuers and residents dealt with the consequences of missile strikes on homes. The prize awarded two days earlier, to figures from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, stood alongside both developments as recognition of work documenting abuses.
