Ukraine strikes bridge linking Crimea to mainland in blow to Russia’s supply lines – National | 24CA News
Ukrainian missiles struck one of many few bridges linking the Crimea Peninsula with the Ukrainian mainland early on Thursday, reducing one of many most important provide routes for Russian occupation forces in southern Ukraine as Kyiv pushes to drive them out.
Vladimir Saldo, the top of the Russian-installed administration in occupied elements of Ukraine’s Kherson province, launched video of himself on the Chonhar street bridge, the place craters had been blasted by means of the asphalt.
“Another meaningless act perpetrated by the Kyiv regime on orders from London. It solves nothing as far as the special military operation is concerned,” he stated, vowing to restore the bridge and restore visitors.
He threatened to retaliate by focusing on a bridge linking neighboring Moldova to NATO-member Romania: “A very serious response is coming very soon.”
The Chonhar bridge hit in a single day is one in every of only a handful of entry roads to Crimea, which is linked to the Ukrainian mainland by a slim isthmus.
Alternative routes require hours-long detours over roads in poor situation. Russia’s RIA new company quoted Russian-installed transport officers in Crimea as saying repairing it might take weeks.
The bridge is past vary of the battlefield rockets Ukraine has used for a yr, however inside attain of newly deployed weapons equivalent to British and French air-launched cruise missiles, permitting Kyiv to hit logistics routes Russia had deemed secure simply weeks in the past.
The strike was “a blow to the military logistics of the occupiers,” stated Yuriy Sobolevsky, a Ukrainian official on the governing physique for the Kherson area.
“The psychological impact on the occupiers and the occupying power is even more important. There is no place on the territory of Kherson region where they can feel safe,” he stated.
Russian investigators stated 4 missiles had been fired by Ukrainian forces on the bridge, the RIA news company reported. It quoted a spokesman for army investigators as saying that markings discovered on the stays of one of many missiles urged it had been made in France.
Ukraine is attacking Russian provide strains to disrupt Moscow’s protection of occupied territory within the south, the place Kyiv is within the early phases of its most bold counteroffensive of the battle.
Kyiv says it has recaptured eight villages to this point, but it surely has but to commit the majority of its forces to the struggle and its advancing troops have but to succeed in the principle Russian defensive strains.
In its newest replace on the preventing, Ukraine’s army reported “partial success” within the southeast and east.
Troops have been reinforcing positions they reached after attacking in the direction of the villages of Rivnopil and Staromayorske, stated General Staff spokesman Andriy Kovaliov, referring to settlements in a Russian-held space the place Ukrainian forces pushing south have to this point captured 4 villages.
He additionally described fierce preventing within the east, the place Ukraine says it has been holding off Russian assaults.
Russia says it has fended off the Ukrainian counterattack and inflicted heavy casualties, which Ukraine denies.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has acknowledged that progress has been sluggish to this point, however says his troops are advancing cautiously into closely mined and well-defended areas to reduce losses.
Zelenskyy on Thursday accused Russia of planning a terrorist assault on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear energy plant, Europe’s largest, which is in Russian-held territory close to the entrance line. Moscow denied any such plan.
