Russia says Ukraine is bombing the Chonhar Bridge leading to Crimea

[ad_1]

June 22, 2023, at 08:20 GMT

Updated 31 minutes ago

Image copyright Telegram / Vladimir Saldo

photo caption,

The roof of Chunhar Bridge was damaged, forcing traffic to use an alternative route

Russian officials said that Ukraine had attacked a bridge linking southern Ukraine and Crimea with British long-range missiles.

The Russian-appointed governor in Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, said that the two parallel Chunhar bridges had been damaged. No one is hurt.

Saldo said it was possible that British Storm Shadow missiles were used in the attack “on London’s orders”.

The bridge is the shortest way from Crimea to the front line in the south.

It is also an important link for the occupied city of Melitopol, which lies on the coastal road from the Russian border through southern Ukraine to Crimea.

Pictures published by Vladimir Saldo showed a gap in one of the two bridges, but he said repairs would be done quickly and vehicles would take a temporary alternative route. Nikolay Lukashenko, another Russian official, said repairs could take weeks.

Ukrainian military spokeswoman Natalia Homenyuk said on national television that the military aimed to disrupt Russian supply routes and military intelligence official Andrei Yusov said more attacks would follow.

Russia uses the road as a land bridge to Crimea, and Melitopol is believed to have been one of the targets of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, which began in the southern region of Zaporizhia earlier this month.

Russian forces captured Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and then in February last year invaded Ukraine’s southern coastal region as well.

Russian-controlled bridges in the area have been bombed by Ukrainian forces before. Last summer, in the weeks before the city of Kherson on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River was recaptured, they repeatedly attacked the Antonevsky Bridge to prevent Russian forces from bringing in supplies from occupied Crimea.

Then in October, a bridge across the Kerch Strait linking Crimea to Russia was shut down for weeks in a deadly attack that President Vladimir Putin condemned as an “act of terrorism”. So far the Kerch Bridge is not open to all traffic.

Vladimir Saldu threatened to respond to the latest attack by targeting a bridge linking neighboring Moldova with Romania. Romania, a NATO member, and Moldova condemned his comments as unacceptable.

The Ukrainian counter-offensive in the south and east made slow progress, with eight villages recaptured so far.

The campaign became more difficult when the Kakhovka Dam on the Dnipro River was destroyed this month in a suspected Russian sabotage attack. Areas below the dam were flooded, making crossing the Dnipro more difficult. Dozens have died, farms have been destroyed, and water supplies have been damaged.

Russian forces continued to target Ukrainian cities, including a residential area in the city of Kryvyih Rih, hometown of President Volodymyr Zelensky, and the southern port of Odessa overnight.

President Zelensky told Ukrainians Thursday that intelligence services have received information that Russia is preparing a “terror attack scenario” on the Zaporizhia nuclear plant, which was seized during last year’s full-scale invasion.

The plant is the largest in Europe and “radiation has no state borders,” Zelensky warned. The Kremlin immediately dismissed his remarks as “another lie”.

Water levels in the canal used to cool the reactors have dropped since the destruction of the Kakhovka dam and the UN agency said the situation around the plant had become increasingly tense amid reports of Ukraine’s counterattack.

Image copyright Telegram / Vladimir Saldo

photo caption,

Chonhar Bridge may stop working for several weeks

[ad_2]