Russia Scrambles to Reconnect Supply Lines to Crimea After Bridge Explosion

Zaporizhzhia, which is about 30 miles from the front lines where Ukrainian and Russian forces are fighting, has become a constant target of Russian shelling in recent days. On Friday, another rocket attack on a residential area also killed 17 people.

“The Russians are not able to respond on the battlefield and therefore hit the cities in the rear,”

Anton Gerashchenko,

an adviser to Ukrainian President

Volodymyr Zelensky,

wrote on Twitter Sunday morning.

Russian Defense Ministry officials didn’t immediately comment.

The weekend’s explosion on the 12-mile bridge that links Russia to Crimea did serious damage to a critical supply line that Moscow uses to move food and fuel to the peninsula, which it seized in 2014, and to support its troops fighting in southern Ukraine.

The bridge, opened by President

Vladimir Putin

to great fanfare in 2018, is also symbolically important—celebrated as a monument to the might of the Russian state and its aim of permanently holding on to the annexed Ukrainian territory.

Officials in Moscow said transport links across the bridge were gradually being restored and that alternative means of moving essential supplies—such as ferry services—would be found.

Moscow blamed the damage on Ukraine. Kyiv hasn’t claimed responsibility for the attack, though Ukrainian officials have publicly celebrated the results of the explosion.

On Sunday, Russia’s Ministry of Transport said long-distance passenger and freight trains were again departing Crimea and crossing the bridge into Russia. Russian authorities didn’t say whether trains would begin moving from Russia into Crimea. Cars were also being permitted to cross the bridge, but it remained closed to trucks.

Russia also said it was restarting ferry service across the Kerch Strait separating Russia and Crimea to carry passengers and freight. Before the construction of the bridge, ferries were the main direct link connecting the two sides of the strait.

Experts said they were unsure whether the bridge remained structurally sound enough to support heavy vehicles.

David MacKenzie, a senior technical director at COWI Holding A/S, a Denmark-based company that designs and builds some of the world’s largest and longest bridges, said it would take several months for Russia to be able to fully restore the damaged spans of the bridge.

Restrictions on truck and train traffic would likely remain because of concerns that the bridge’s substructure has been damaged, Mr. MacKenzie said.

The bridge explosion triggered outrage among some senior lawmakers, as well as ordinary Russians. But Russian state media sought to play down the event, refraining from calling it an attack and airing television interviews with cheerful train passengers expressing gratitude that service had been restored and voicing confidence in using the bridge.

The damage to the bridge will test the Russian military’s logistics, which are heavily reliant on rail transport and were already strained. Russian forces in southern Ukraine are trying to fight off Ukrainian counterattacks and hold on to territory they took in the first weeks of the war.

Ukraine, using long-range Himars rocket systems supplied by the U.S., has already disabled most bridges across the Dnipro River, which separates the Russian-occupied city of Kherson and its surroundings from other Russian-held territory.

Ukraine has made steady progress in the region over the past month, though its advances have been slower than in the northeast, where it forces retook thousands of square miles of territory in just a few days last month.

On Saturday, Ukraine used Himars rockets to destroy a railway hub used by the Russian military in the southern part of the Donetsk region, which could have served as another resupply route to the occupied south.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said the damage to the bridge wouldn’t permanently disrupt Russian supply lines, but is likely to cause significant problems in the short term.

“Russian forces will likely still be able to transport heavy military equipment via the railroad,” the institute wrote. “Russian officials will likely intensify security checks on all vehicles crossing the bridge, however, adding delays to the movement of Russian military equipment, personnel, and supplies to Crimea.”

Write to Ian Lovett at ian.lovett@wsj.com and Ann M. Simmons at ann.simmons@wsj.com