Russian investigators said they believed “explosions” had caused two bridges in the border regions of Kursk and Bryansk to collapse overnight, derailing trains, killing at least seven people and injuring dozens.
In Bryansk, which borders Ukraine, a road bridge collapsed on to a railway line late on Saturday, derailing a passenger train heading to Moscow and killing at least seven people. A rail bridge in neighbouring Kursk also collapsed overnight, derailing a freight train and injuring the driver, officials said. Kursk also borders Ukraine.
Separately, railway track on the Unecha-Zhecha section in Russia’s Bryansk region was damaged without casualties, the national operator, Russian Railways, said.
The twin bridge disasters came on the eve of possible peace talks in Turkey demanded by the US and aimed at ending the three-year-old war in Ukraine.
Videos posted on social media from Bryansk showed rescuers climbing over the mangled chassis of a Russian Railways train, while screams could be heard in another video.
State media said Russian investigators were investigating the bridge blasts as “acts of terrorism”. The Kremlin said the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, had been briefed throughout the night.
Russia has been hit by dozens of sabotage attacks since Moscow launched its offensive against Ukraine in 2022, many targeting its vast railroad network. Kyiv says railroads are targeted because they transport troops and weaponry to the Ukraine war.
Ukraine, which Russia has blamed for previous incidents, did not immediately comment. However its military intelligence service, known by the Ukrainian abbreviation GUR, said a Russian military freight train carrying food and fuel had been blown up on its way to Crimea. It did not claim the attack was carried out by GUR or mention the bridge collapses.
The GUR statement said Moscow’s key “artery” with the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia region and Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, had been destroyed.
Bryansk’s acting governor said the catastrophe in his region was the result of an explosion.
“The bridge was blown up while the Klimovo-Moscow train was passing through with 388 passengers onboard,” the Interfax agency quoted Alexander Bogomaz as telling Russia’s public broadcaster.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, which investigates serious crimes, said later that both bridges collapsed due to explosions. Prosecutors said they had opened an investigation.
“There are seven dead as a result of the collapse of a bridge on to railway tracks,” said Alexander Bogomaz, the Bryansk region’s governor.
At least 69 others were injured, including three children, officials said.
The train was travelling from the town of Klimovo to Moscow, Russian Railways said. It collided with the collapsed bridge in the area of a federal highway in the Vygonichskyi district of the Bryansk region, said Bogomaz, the Bryansk governor. The district lies 62 miles (100km) from the border with Ukraine.
Separately, in the Kursk region a rail bridge collapsed, derailing a freight train that was going across. “Last night … in the Zheleznogorsk district, a bridge collapsed while a freight locomotive was passing. Part of the train fell on to the road below the bridge,” said the Kursk region governor, Alexander Khinshtein.
“One of the locomotive drivers suffered leg injuries and the entire crew was taken to hospital.”
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Moscow Railways at first blamed the Bryansk collapse on “illegal interference in the operation of transport” in a post online. It later appeared to have removed the reference to “illegal interference”.
An AFP reporter in central Moscow saw ambulances parked at Kievsky railway station awaiting the arrival of injured passengers. Russia’s emergency ministry said a team was on site in Bryansk, while Russian Railways said it had sent repair trains.
The blasts came after a week of escalation in the war amid fears of a large-scale summer offensive by Moscow, with deadly cross-border attacks and Russian troops massing along the front in eastern Ukraine.
Russian politicians immediately blamed Ukraine for the explosions, saying it was clearly sabotage aimed at undermining possible direct talks on Monday in Istanbul.
“This is definitely the work of the Ukrainian special services,” the chair of the defence committee of the lower house of the Russian parliament, Andrei Kartapolov, told the SHOT Telegram channel.
“All this is aimed at toughening the position of the Russian Federation and stoking aggression before the negotiations. And also to intimidate people. But they won’t succeed.”
The US president, Donald Trump, has pressured both sides to end the war and threatened to walk away if they do not, potentially leaving Kyiv entirely dependent on European aid.
Ukraine has been non-committal about the talks in Turkey, saying it first needed to see Russia’s proposals for a ceasefire.
Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 there have been continued back-and-forth clashes including shelling, drone and missile strikes, and covert raids from Ukraine into the Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod regions.
With Reuters, Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press
