Global Courant
By Tom Balmforth
KYIV (Reuters) – Ukrainian missiles struck one of the few bridges connecting the Crimean peninsula to the Ukrainian mainland early on Thursday, cutting off one of the main supply routes for Russian occupation forces in southern Ukraine as Kiev pushes for them to to expel.
Vladimir Saldo, the head of the Russian-installed administration in the occupied parts of Ukraine’s Kherson province, released a video of himself on the Chonhar road bridge, where craters had shot through the asphalt.
“Another senseless act committed by the Kiev regime on the orders of London. It solves nothing as far as the special military operation is concerned,” he said, vowing to repair the bridge and restore traffic.
He threatened to retaliate by targeting a bridge connecting neighboring Moldova to NATO member Romania: “There will be a very serious answer very soon.”
The Chonhar Bridge, which was hit overnight, is one of the few access roads to Crimea, which is connected to the Ukrainian mainland via a narrow isthmus.
Alternative routes require hours of detours on roads in poor condition. Russia’s new RIA agency quoted Russian-installed transport officials in Crimea as saying repairs could take weeks.
The bridge is out of range of the battlefield missiles that Ukraine has used for a year, but within range of newly deployed weapons such as British and French air-launched cruise missiles, allowing Kiev to reach logistical routes that Russia secured just a few weeks ago. esteemed.
‘PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT’
The strike was “a blow to the military logistics of the occupiers,” said Yuriy Sobolevsky, a Ukrainian official in the governing body for the Kherson region.
“The psychological impact on the occupiers and the occupying power is even more significant. There is no place in the Kherson region where they can feel safe,” he said.
Russian investigators said four rockets had been fired by Ukrainian troops at the bridge, the RIA news agency reported. It quoted a spokesman for military investigators as saying markings on the remains of one of the missiles suggested it was made in France.
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Ukraine is attacking Russian supply lines to disrupt Moscow’s defenses of occupied territory in the south, where Kiev is in the early stages of its most ambitious counter-offensive of the war.
Kiev says it has so far recaptured eight villages, but has yet to commit most of its forces to battle and its advancing troops have not yet reached main Russian defense lines.
In its latest update on the fighting, the Ukrainian army reported “partial success” in the southeast and east.
Troops reinforced positions they reached after attacks on the villages of Rivnopil and Staromayorske, General Staff spokesman Andriy Kovaliov said, referring to settlements in a Russian-occupied area where Ukrainian forces advancing south have so far taken four villages.
He also described heavy fighting in the east, where Ukraine says it is fighting off Russian attacks.
Russia says it repelled the Ukrainian counterattack and inflicted heavy casualties, which Ukraine denies.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has acknowledged progress has been slow so far, but says his troops are advancing cautiously into heavily mined and well-defended areas to minimize casualties.
Zelenskiy accused Russia on Thursday of planning a terrorist attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, which is located in Russian-occupied territory near the front line. Moscow denied such a plan.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Gareth Jones)
