Russia-Ukraine war live: fire engulfs crucial Kerch bridge between Crimea and Russia as section collapses

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Damage caused by the explosion on Kerch bridge earlier today.

Here is some more footage of the moment of the blast on the Kerch bridge from Russia to Crimea, a hated symbol of the Kremlin’s occupation of the southern Ukrainian peninsular.

Images from the bridge showed a fiercely burning fire engulfing at least two railway carriages from a train on the bridge, accompanied by a vast column of black smoke, and one half of the parallel road bridge collapsed into the Kerch Strait.

The explosion, which witnesses said could be heard kilometres away, took place before 6am on Saturday while a train was crossing the bridge.

A Ukrainian presidential adviser posted a message on Twitter after conflicting reports of an explosion or fire on Saturday that damaged the bridge connecting the Russian mainland to the occupied Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, calling it “the beginning” but not directly claiming Ukrainian responsibility.

“Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled,” Mykhailo Podolyak wrote.

Vladimir Putin marked his 70th birthday on Friday with little fanfare, amid further signs that key parts of the Russian president’s invasion of Ukraine were unravelling and triggering unprecedented criticism at home, Reuters reports.

News programs made only passing references to the birthday and public events were low-key, in contrast to just a week ago when Putin held a huge concert on Red Square to proclaim the annexation of nearly a fifth of Ukrainian land.

Putin was shown on state television meeting leaders of other former Soviet allies at an informal summit in St Petersburg.

The Kerch bridge from Russia to Crimea – a hated symbol of the Kremlin’s occupation of the southern Ukrainian peninsular – has been hit by a massive explosion on the span that carries railway traffic.

Images from the bridge showed a fiercely burning fire engulfing at least two railway carriages from a train on the bridge, accompanied by a vast column of black smoke.

The explosion, which witnesses said could be heard kilometres away, took place around 6am on Saturday while a train was crossing the bridge, although it was not immediately clear what caused it.

Some images appeared to show a second fire at some distance from the main blaze. Later images also appeared to show that part of road bridge that runs parallel with the train tracks had collapsed.

Peter Beaumont in Kyiv has the story:

A series of explosions shook Kharkiv early on Saturday, sending towering plumes of smoke into the sky and triggering a series of secondary explosions in the eastern Ukraine city. Associated Press reported there were no immediate reports of casualties. The blasts came hours after Russia concentrated attacks on areas it illegally annexed.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy says Russian officials have begun to “prepare their society” for the possible use of nuclear weapons in the war. The Ukrainian president denied having called for strikes on Russia, urging instead that pre-emptive sanctions be imposed on Moscow, in an interview with the BBC.

Russia has targeted Zaporizhzhia with explosive-packed “kamikaze drones” for the first time, as the death toll from a missile strike on an apartment building in the city rose to 11. The regional governor, Oleksandr Starukh, said Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones damaged two infrastructure facilities in the city. He said other missiles also struck the city again, injuring one person. The Iranian foreign ministry has denied supplying the drones to Russia.

The Russian justice ministry has declared one of the country’s most popular rappers to be a “foreign agent”, a designation that has been used to harass Kremlin critics and journalists. Oxxxymiron – real name Miron Fyodorov – was added to a list of foreign agents alongside four journalists and Dmitry Glukhovsky, a prominent writer. The rapper has called the Kremlin’s Ukraine offensive a “catastrophe and a crime”.

Ukrainian authorities found a mass grave in the recently recaptured eastern town of Lyman in Donetsk and it was unclear yet how many bodies it held, the regional governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said in an online post on Friday. Separately, the Ukrinform news agency cited a senior police official as saying the grave contained 180 bodies.

The bodies of 534 civilians including 19 children were found in the north-eastern Kharkiv region since Russian troops left, Serhiy Bolvinov of the national police in Kharkiv said. That included 447 bodies found in Izium. He also said investigators had found evidence of 22 sites being used as “torture rooms”.

Russia has reportedly sacked the commander of its eastern military district, Col Gen Alexander Chaiko, the news outlet RBC has reported. His reported departure marks the latest in a series of top officials to be fired after defeats and humiliations in the war in Ukraine.

Joe Biden has warned the world could face “Armageddon” if Vladimir Putin uses a tactical nuclear weapon to try to win the war in Ukraine. The US president made his most outspoken remarks to date about the threat of nuclear war, saying it was the closest the world had come to nuclear catastrophe for 60 years, “since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis”.

The US does not have indications that Russia is preparing to imminently use nuclear weapons, the White House said. Asked about Biden’s comments, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said: “He was reinforcing what we have been saying, which is how seriously … we take these threats.”

The 2022 Nobel peace prize has been awarded to human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, the Russian human rights organisation Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights organisation Centre for Civil Liberties. Oleksandra Matviychuk, the centre’s head, said on Facebook after the award that Vladimir Putin as well as the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, and other “war criminals” should face an international tribunal, and Russia should be excluded from the UN security council “for systematic violations of the UN charter”.

The International Monetary Fund has announced it will provide $1.3bn in emergency aid to Ukraine through its new food crisis assistance program.

A member of Putin’s inner circle directly confronted the Russian president over mistakes and failings in the war in Ukraine, the Washington Post has reported, citing US intelligence.

At least five people were killed and as many injured after Ukrainian forces struck a bus while shelling a strategically important bridge in the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, Russia’s Tass news agency has reported.

The armed forces’ headquarters of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic has claimed to have captured three settlements from Ukrainian forces in Donetsk.

The office of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, said after a call with Putin that the pair discussed the latest developments in Ukraine, and Erdo?an repeated Ankara’s willingness to do its part to peacefully resolve the war.

The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, has congratulated Putin on his 70th birthday, applauding him for his “distinguished leadership and strong will”. Kim spoke of Putin’s achievements in “building powerful Russia” and said the Russian leader was “enjoying high respects and support from the broad masses of people”.