The first bridge, in the Bryansk region on the border with Ukraine, collapsed on top of a passenger train from Klimov to Moscow on Saturday, causing the casualties.
Hours later, officials said a second train was derailed when the bridge beneath it collapsed in the nearby Kursk region, which also borders Ukraine.
In that collapse, a freight train was thrown off its rails onto the road below as an explosion collapsed the bridge, local acting Governor Alexander Khinshtein said on Sunday. The crash sparked a fire, but there were no casualties, he said.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, the country’s top criminal investigation agency, said in a statement that explosions had caused the two bridges to collapse, but did not give further details.
In the past, some officials have accused pro-Ukrainian saboteurs of attacking Russia’s railway infrastructure. The details surrounding such incidents, however, are limited and cannot be independently verified.
In a statement Sunday, Ukraine’s military intelligence, known by the Ukrainian abbreviation GUR, said a Russian military freight train carrying food and fuel had been blown up on its way to Crimea. It did not claim the attack was carried out by GUR or mention the bridge collapses. The statement said Moscow’s key “artery with the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia region and Crimea has been destroyed”.
Russian forces have been pushing into the region of Zaporizhzhia in eastern Ukraine since Moscow’s invasion in February 2022. They took Crimea and annexed it in 2014.
