By Editor-June 22nd, 2023
Ukrainian forces have attacked a bridge connecting Ukraine’s Kherson region and Crimea with missiles, Russia-appointed officials in both regions said on Thursday, according to a Germans news broadcaster.
Russians sources have alleged that missiles supplied by Britain were used.
The Chongar bridge, which connects Russian-held parts of the Kherson region with the Crimean peninsula, was struck and damaged, the officials said, adding that traffic was diverted to another route.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said four missiles had been fired at the bridge by Ukrainian forces.
The Russia-appointed governor of Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, said the bridge was likely to have been attacked by Storm Shadow missiles that damaged the road. He added that no casualties were reported.
Crimea’s governor, Sergey Aksenov, said specialists were probing the site to see when traffic over the bridge could resume.
Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, years ahead of the full-scale invasion it launched in 2022.
The Crimean Bridge is a pair of parallel bridges, one carrying a four-lane road and the other a double-track railway, spanning the Kerch strait between Russia on the east side and the Crimea peninsula on the west side. Construction began in February 2016, following the Russian occupation and annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014.
The Russian authorities called the construction of the bridge a “historic mission”, one of the key tasks for the “final unification of Crimea with Russia”. In May 2018, the road bridge was opened to traffic, and in December 2019, the rail bridge became operational.
Ukrainian officials and military have repeatedly declared their intention to destroy the Crimean Bridge, considering it as a legitimate military target as it is used to supply Russian troops in the Crimea.
Meanwhile Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukrainian spies have received information showing Russia is considering carrying out a “terrorist” attack at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.
Speaking in a video statement on the Telegram platform, Zelenskyy said Kyiv was sharing information about the Russian-occupied facility in southern Ukraine with European allies, the United States, China and India.
Zelenskiy did not say what evidence was behind the assertion by intelligence agencies.
Moscow dismissed the allegations as a lie, adding that UN nuclear inspectors had visited the plant and rated what they saw there highly.
Source: Deutsche Welle, Wikipedia, BBC.
