At least seven people have been killed and some 70 injured after the collapse of two bridges in two Russian regions bordering Ukraine, local officials said on Sunday, in what appears to be a coordinated Ukrainian attempt to disrupt Russian railway lines.
While Ukraine has so far not commented on the reports, the military intelligence service in Kiev said a Russian freight train carrying military supplies from the Ukrainian mainland to Crimea was blown up early on Saturday in a Russian-occupied part of the south-eastern region of Zaporizhzhya.
Russian investigators have said the overnight collapse of the two bridges near the border with Ukraine was caused by “acts of terrorism,” according to the Interfax news agency.
The twin collapse came one day before a possible second round of direct peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday confirmed his country’s participation in the negotiations proposed by Russia and set for Monday, saying the Ukrainian delegation would be led by Defence Minister Rustem Umerov. But it remains to be seen whether Moscow will stick to the plan following the latest attacks.
Seven killed in Bryansk collapse
At least seven people were killed and some 70 others injured, including three children, after a passenger train derailed following the bridge collapse in Bryansk, Governor Alexander Bogomaz said.
Bogomaz also confirmed reports of an explosion on the bridge, located about 80 kilometres from the border with Ukraine.
The train en route from Klimovo to Moscow had been carrying 388 people, Bogomaz said on state television.
A span of the bridge collapsed and then fell onto a train passing underneath, the state-run Russian news agency TASS reported. The conductor of the train was among those killed, TASS added.
One person was injured when a freight train derailed after another bridge collapsed overnight in neighbouring Kursk, according to Alexander Khinshtein, the governor of the region which was partially occupied by Ukrainian troops for several months.
Part of the train crashed onto a motorway under the bridge and the locomotive caught fire, he said on Telegram.
According to initial reports, the train driver was injured. The cause of the second bridge collapse is still unclear.
According to the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke on the phone with the head of Russian Railways and Bryansk Governor Bogomaz after receiving reports of the incidents during the night.
Ukrainian intelligence has repeatedly carried out acts of sabotage and attacks on Russian territory as the country continues to fend of the full-scale invasion launched by Moscow on February 24, 2022.
Military train blast in occupied Ukraine
While the Ukrainian military has not commented on the twin incidents so far, its intelligence service on Sunday reported a train blast in occupied south-western Ukraine.
The military train en route to the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea carrying fuel tanks and freight cars derailed as a result of an explosion early on Saturday, the statement said.
The blast disrupted an important logistical route for the Russian military in the occupied areas of Zaporizhzhya and Crimea, it said.
Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, before occupying about one fifth of Ukraine’s mainland territory as part of its full-scale invasion.
Moscow has so far not commented on the claims.
Russian attacks reported from across Ukraine
Meanwhile, Russian forces launched fresh drone attacks on the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhya overnight, regional military governor Ivan Fedorov said on Sunday.
Critical infrastructure had been hit and an administrative building partially destroyed, he wrote on Telegram. He did not elaborate on what facilities had been struck.
A fire had broken out at the site and a woman had been injured, Fedorov said.
At least seven Iranian-made Shahed drones were involved in the attack, in which homes were also hit, he added.
There were also reports of heavy drone and rocket fire from Zhytomyr, Cherkasy and the capital Kiev.
The reports could not be independently verified.
Russian strike hits military training unit
Elsewhere in Ukraine, at least 12 people were killed in a Russian missile strike on an army training unit, according to the military.
More than 60 people were injured in Sunday’s attack, according to a statement by the ground forces.
According to the military, no roll call or mass gathering took place during the attack, with most personnel in shelters following the air raid.
The military did not say where the attack took place.
