Ukraine said on Tuesday that it had hit the bridge connecting Russia and the occupied Crimean Peninsula with explosives planted underwater, in its third attack on the vital supply line for Moscow’s forces since the full-scale war began in 2022.
Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, said on Telegram that its agents had mined the piers of the road and rail Crimean Bridge, also called the Kerch Bridge, and detonated the first explosive at 4.44 a.m. Tuesday. The whole operation took several months, it added.
The agency said it had used 1,100 kilograms of explosives which “severely damaged” the underwater pillars supporting the bridge.
Russian officials did not immediately respond to Ukraine’s claims. Traffic on the bridge has been temporarily suspended, the bridge operator announced on its official Telegram account.
Although the scale of the damage was not immediately clear, Tuesday’s attack is the latest example of the SBU’s attempts to blindside Moscow and demonstrate that there are costs to continuing its war.
Built after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Putin opened the bridge in 2018. The project cost around $3.7 billion.
Credit: cnn.com
