Four people dead in weekend Crimean Bridge blast — including Moscow Arbitration Court judge
The death toll from the October 8 explosion on the Crimean Bridge has risen to four people, TASS reports, citing an anonymous source in the emergency-response services.
“According to current data, the number of victims has increased to four. One of them is Sergey Vladimirovich Maslov, a judge of the Moscow Arbitration Court.
The court’s website states that Sergey Maslov was appointed Justice in May 2014, by the President’s decree. He was part of a judicial collegium on civil and other kinds of disputes.
According to the source cited by TASS, all four people killed in the explosion were traveling in the same car. The same source added that the remaining bodies are still being identified.
Earlier, Maslov’s death was reported by Moskovsky Komsomolets and the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel. According to their reports, Maslov was traveling along the bridge in a Cadillac Escalade SUV, together with two St. Petersburg historians and guides, Eduard Chuchakin and his wife Zoya Sofronova, as well as a fitness trainer, Gleb Orgetkin, from Yevpatoria.
Early in the morning on October 8, a truck exploded on the Kerch Strait Bridge, colloquially known as the Crimean Bridge and serving as Russia’s artery to the annexed Crimean peninsula. As a result, part of the automotive section of the bridge collapsed, and a cargo train carrying cisterns along its railway section caught fire. The Investigative Committee reported three people dead from the blast.
President Vladimir Putin blamed the explosion on the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), calling the blast “a terrorist act targeting Russia’s critically important civilian infrastructure.”
On October 10–11, Russia carried out numerous missile strikes across Ukraine. Putin explained the massive shelling of Ukrainian cities as a response to the Crimean Bridge attack. The SBU, nevertheless, think that the massive air strikes were planned by Russia as far back as October 2–3.
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