Ukraine says it has struck bridge connecting Russia to Crimea with underwater explosives

CNN
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Ukraine’s safety service, the SBU, mentioned on Tuesday that it had hit the bridge connecting Russia and the occupied Crimean Peninsula with explosives planted underwater.

“The Safety Service of Ukraine carried out a brand new distinctive particular operation and struck the Crimean Bridge for the third time – this time underwater!” the SBU wrote on Telegram.

The operation got here after the SBU on Sunday launched an audacious air raid on Russia’s fleet of nuclear-capable strategic bombers.

The SBU mentioned its brokers had mined the piers of the road-and-rail Crimean Bridge, additionally referred to as the Kerch Bridge, and detonated the primary explosive at 4.44 a.m. Tuesday. The entire operation had taken a number of months, it added.

The company mentioned it had used 1,100 kilograms of explosives which “severely broken” the underwater pillars supporting the bridge.

Russian officers didn’t instantly reply to Ukraine’s declare. Earlier Tuesday, the bridge operator’s official Telegram account introduced that visitors on the bridge had been quickly suspended. By 9 a.m. native time, it mentioned regular visitors had been resumed.

Constructed following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, the 12-mile bridge was an important provide line for Moscow’s warfare effort in Ukraine and a private mission for President Vladimir Putin, embodying his goal to bind the Ukrainian peninsula to Russia.

Tuesday’s assault marks the third time that Ukraine has focused the bridge since Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022. In October of that yr, a gasoline truck exploded on the bridge, engulfing part of it in flames. In July 2023, the SBU mentioned it had blown up a part of the bridge using an experimental sea drone. Each occasions, Russia moved shortly to restore the broken sections.

“God loves the Trinity, and the SBU at all times sees issues by to the tip and by no means does the identical factor twice. We beforehand struck the Crimean Bridge twice, in 2022 and 2023. So immediately we continued this custom, this time underwater,” mentioned Vasyl Malyuk, the top of the SBU, on Tuesday.