Within hours of a The explosion that destroyed the only bridge To link Crimea to Russia early Saturday, hardline military bloggers and Russian officials called for a swift and strong response from Moscow.

One high-ranking politician said anything less than an “extremely harsh” response would show the weakness of the Kremlin, which faces constant battlefield losses and mounting criticism at home.

For Russian President Vladimir Putin, who oversaw the bridge’s opening in 2018, the explosion seemed a deeply personal insult, underscoring his failure to deal with Relentless series of Ukrainian attacks.

Some commentators in the news media have demanded that Russia destroy Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure and transportation systems used to import Western weapons.

No one in the Ukrainian leadership fears Russia anymore, said Evgeny Poddubny, a war correspondent for state channel RT.

“The enemy has ceased to be afraid, and this circumstance needs to be corrected immediately,” he wrote in the RT channel on Telegram. “The leaders of the formations, the heads of intelligence agencies, the politicians of the Kyiv criminal system sleep peacefully, wake up without a headache and in a good mood, without feeling the inevitability of punishing the crimes committed.”

Alexander Kots, a war correspondent for the Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, wrote on Telegram that the bridge’s disruption bodes ill for Moscow’s already turbulent efforts to hold territory in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine – and most likely predicted a future attack on Crimea itself.

He called Ukraine’s “consistency” in the war “enviable” and called on Russia to “push Ukraine into the eighteenth century, without meaningless thinking about how this would affect the civilian population.”

While no one has claimed responsibility for it, Ukrainian officials, who have said in the past that the bridge would be a legitimate target for the strike, indicated that the explosion was not an accident and they did not hide their satisfaction.

“Crimea, the bridge, the beginning,” wrote Mikhailo Podolak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, in Twitter share on Saturday. “Everything is illegal, it must be destroyed. Everything stolen returned to Ukraine. All Russian occupiers expelled.”

The explosion is a symbol of the Russian army in disarray. Russian forces were unable to protect the road and rail crossing despite their centrality to the war effort, their personal importance to Mr. Putin and their powerful symbolism as the literal link between Russia and Crimea.

For Russia, the railway crossing played a key role in transporting heavy military vehicles to the Southern Front during the invasion, British Defense Intelligence Agency He wrote in his daily review Sunday. She added that while the extent of damage to the railway is uncertain, “any serious disruption of its capability would likely have a significant impact on Russia’s already strained ability to maintain its forces in southern Ukraine.”

Hours after the explosion, the Kremlin appointed General Sergei Surovkin, another new commander, to oversee its forces in Ukraine. Previous changes in leadership have done little to correct the army’s faltering performance.

Military analysts said General Surovkin, 55, has long been known for corruption and brutality.

“He is known as a somewhat ruthless leader, short on subordinates and known for his temper,” said Michael Kaufman, director of Russian studies at CNA, a defense research institute based in Virginia.

His appointment was soon praised by some of the war’s biggest proponents, including Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner mercenary group that was heavily deployed in Syria. He made a rare public endorsement of the general, calling him “legendary”.