Two motorway bridges to the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, annexed by Russia, became the target of a Ukrainian attack yesterday. According to a statement by the Ukrainian military in the Telegram service, the Ukrainian armed forces attacked two important supply routes of the Russian occupiers at around 3 p.m. local time – the bridges of Chonhar and Henichesk.

The Chonhar Bridge between Crimea and mainland Ukraine was hit by a missile and damaged, Kherson Oblast occupation chief Vladimir Saldo wrote on Telegram. Also a little further northeast near Henichesk, a bridge was fired at with several missiles and a nearby gas pipeline was also damaged.

Saldo published two photos that are said to show a larger hole in the roadway of the Chonhar Bridge. Photos later published by Ukrainian media also show the damage to the bridge. Ukrainian media also published photos in the evening showing massive damage to the two-lane Henichesk Bridge. The information could not initially be checked independently.

The Russian occupation authorities of Crimea initially reported only two connecting routes to the mainland that remained open to traffic in the north of the peninsula. The approximately 70-kilometer route between the city of Dschankoj in northern Crimea and Nowooleksiivka in the south of the Russian-occupied Cherson region is therefore completely closed. The land connection at Henichesk is also not indicated by the occupation authorities as a possible road connection to Crimea.

The Chonhar Bridge is an important supply route for the Russian army, which has now been waging a war of aggression against Ukraine for more than 17 months. It has already been attacked several times by the Ukrainians as part of their counter-offensive this summer. Kyiv wants to liberate all parts of its territory occupied by Russia – including Crimea, which was annexed by Moscow in violation of international law in 2014.

Image by Wikimedia (Leon Petrosyan)/ Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)