Russian man named as owner of the truck involved in Crimea bridge blast

A 25-year-old Russian man owns the truck that Russian authorities say blew up its crucial Kerch Strait bridge to Crimea — but he was not in the driver’s seat.

Russian law enforcement named Samir Yusubov, a resident of the Russian city of Krasnodar — about an hour’s drive from the span that supplies Vladimir Putin’s troops in southern Ukraine — as the registered owner of the red International Prostar truck that was enveloped in a massive fireball early Saturday morning.

In a video filmed for Baza Media and posted to social media, the seemingly stunned young man said that an older relative, Makhir Yusubov, 52, was using the vehicle.

“I’ve got nothing to do with what happened on the Crimean bridge,” he said in the 28-second clip. “It was my uncle working with it, my father’s cousin, Makhir Yusubov. He has been into cargo transportation all life long.”

His uncle usually arranged his work orders through a website, Samir Yusubov said — and has not been heard from since the blast ripped through the roadway, collapsing part of the span. 

The three people killed in the explosion, according to Russian authorities, have not yet been identified.