(FiveNation.com)- On Wednesday, the FSB, Russia’s domestic intelligence service, announced that it had arrested eight people in connection with last Saturday’s bombing of the Kerch Bridge that connects Russia with its illegally annexed territory of Crimea.
After Saturday’s explosion, which temporarily halted all train and vehicle traffic between Russia and Crimea, Moscow immediately accused Kyiv of being behind the attack.
The deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, called the explosion “a terrorist act” of “sabotage” committed by the “criminal” regime in Kyiv. He said Russia must respond by “killing terrorists.”
Russia’s State Duma condemned the attack calling it “a declaration of war without rules.”
In a video address on Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin also described Saturday’s bomb blast as “an act of terrorism.”
While Ukraine has not taken responsibility for the blast, believed to have been caused by a truck explosion, Ukrainian officials did celebrate it with snarky one-liner remarks on Twitter.
Early Monday, after months of relative calm in Ukraine’s capital, a series of explosions rocked Kyiv. Putin boasted that the strikes were an act of revenge for Saturday’s explosion.
And in a press release on Wednesday, the FSB said the entire operation was controlled by Ukrainian military intelligence. It accused the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and its head Kyrylo Budanov of coordinating the attack.
In its release, the FSB also said it had detained five Russian citizens, three Ukrainians, and an Armenian for their involvement in the operation.
According to the FSB, the device used in the explosion was hidden in rolls of construction film that were shipped from the Black Sea port of Odesa to Bulgaria in early August. It was then moved through Georgia and Armenia before arriving in Russia earlier this month.
And while Ukraine has officially denied any involvement in Saturday’s bombing, the New York Times reported on Wednesday that an unnamed senior Ukrainian official confirmed that Kyiv was behind it.
