A bridge which suffered significant damage following a large explosion has reopened, Russian officials have said.
Early on Saturday morning, an explosion took place on the Kerch Bridge - a key supply for Russia’s war effort in southern Ukraine. Three people were killed from the blast on the bridge which links Russia to Crimea.
Sergei Aksyonov, head of the Russian-appointed regional administration in Crimea, said that the bridge has now reopened to traffic.
In a statement, he said: "The movement of vehicles along the Crimean bridge has begun. At the moment, traffic is open to cars and buses with a full inspection procedure.
"We ask truck drivers to plan their route using the Kerch ferry crossing. Two hours later, the Kerch-2 ferry begins to sail across the strait."
Previously, authorities said a man and a woman who were riding in a vehicle across the bridge were killed by the explosion, which they believed to have come from a lorry.
Their bodies were later recovered. Details of the third victim remain unknown.
Russia's National Anti-Terrorism Committee said that a truck bomb caused seven railway cars carrying fuel to catch fire, resulting in a "partial collapse of two sections of the bridge."
In a statement, made via Russia's state news agency, authorities said: "On the Krymsky bridge, passengers of a passenger car driving next to the exploded truck died, the bodies of a man and a woman were raised from the water.
"The investigation established the data of the truck that was blown up on the Crimean bridge, and its owner, this is a resident of the Krasnodar Territory, investigative actions have been launched at his place of residence, the Investigative Committee said.
"The route of movement of the car and documentation are also being studied."
An explosion tore across Russia’s bridge across the Kerch strait to Crimea in the early hours of this morning.
— max seddon (@maxseddon) October 8, 2022
The bridge is an important conduit for Russian supply routes in Ukraine and a huge source of Putin's prestige. This is a hugely damaging blow. pic.twitter.com/eWyWPn54Xw
Authorities expect to reopen the bridge later on Saturday evening, Russian officials said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled the bridge in 2018 after Crimea was annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
In September, Russia announced the annexation of the provinces of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia after staging referendums that Kyiv and the West say were phoney exercises held at gunpoint.
It comes after Joe Biden said the risk of nuclear “Armageddon” is at the highest level since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, as Russian officials threaten to use tactical nuclear weapons after a series of setbacks in Ukraine.
"Vladimir Putin is a guy I know fairly well, and he’s not joking when he talks about using tactical nuclear, biological or chemical weapons," Mr Biden said.
"We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis."
Mr Biden suggested the threat from Mr Putin is real "because his military is - you might say - significantly underperforming".
US officials have for months warned of the prospect that Russia could use weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine as it has faced strategic setbacks on the battlefield, though Mr Biden’s remarks marked the starkest warnings yet by the US government about the nuclear stakes.
Still, nothing has changed in US intelligence assessments that in recent weeks have shown no evidence that Mr Putin has imminent plans to deploy nuclear weapons, according to US officials.
