Ukraine War Live Updates: Bridge to Russian-Occupied Crimea Is Damaged
Image The damaged Chonhar bridge connecting Russian-held parts of Ukraine’s Kherson region to the Crimean Peninsula on Thursday. Credit... The occupation governor in the Kherson region Vladimir Saldo, via Reuters
A Russian-backed official said on Thursday that Kyiv’s military had struck a bridge connecting the rest of Ukraine to occupied Crimea, a peninsula well behind the front lines and one that is vital to Moscow’s war effort.
Sergei Aksyonov, the Kremlin-installed leader of Crimea, said that there were no casualties from an overnight attack on the Chonhar bridge that connects the peninsula to the Kherson region of southern Ukraine. He said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app that bomb technicians were investigating the cause.
The Crimean Peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, is important to Moscow’s control over occupied territories in southern and eastern Ukraine. It has increasingly become a target of attacks, although Ukraine typically maintains a policy of not explicitly claiming responsibility for strikes there.
Although Mr. Aksyonov did not assign blame for the strike, the Russian-backed governor of occupied Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, directly blamed Ukraine. He accused the “criminal Kyiv regime” of hitting the bridge with long-range missiles donated by Britain and damaging the pavement. “We know how to repair bridges quickly,” Mr. Saldo said on Telegram. “Vehicle passage will be restored in the very near future.” There was no immediate comment from Ukraine’s military. Videos and photographs verified by The New York Times show damage to both bridges that run across the Chonhar Strait between Crimea and the Kherson region. The main road bridge has a hole in it, and the surface of the smaller bridge that runs alongside it also appears to be damaged. In April, Ukraine’s military acknowledged an attack on an oil depot in Crimea — part of what it said was preparations for a counteroffensive. Severing the “land bridge,” the Ukrainian territory that Russia occupies between its border and Crimea, is a major objective of that campaign, which began to take shape this month. Crimea has been a staging ground for Moscow’s invasion, serving as a vital link in the Russian military’s supply chain that supports the tens of thousands of soldiers occupying parts of southern Ukraine. Russia has in recent months been trying to strengthen its defenses along the Crimean coast, laying land mines and building obstacles to slow down tanks. Russia’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, accused Ukraine’s military this week of planning to strike Crimea with long-range missiles and warned of “immediate retaliatory strikes” if it did. When a bombing in October badly damaged the Kerch Strait Bridge, a vital supply route to Crimea, Russia responded by attacking Ukraine’s power grid — a campaign that marked a notable escalation in the war. Haley Willis contributed reporting.
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Source: The New York Times
