The Kerch bridge in the aftermath of the explosion June 3, 2025
In what was Kyiv's third attack on the structure, its security service said it detonated 1,100kg of explosives early on Tuesday, damaging some underwater pillars.
According to Ukraine's SBU, its agents had secretly mined the bridge's foundations in a months-long operation aimed at destabilising a vital artery for supplying Russian forces.
The SBU said in a statement: "Today, without any casualties among the civilian population, at 4:44 in the morning the first explosive device was activated!"
© The Telegraph
On Sunday, Ukraine pulled off one of its most audacious missions inside enemy territory, destroying dozens of Vladimir Putin's prized strategic bombers in coordinated drone strikes.
Comment: The Telegraph's a little over optimistic here. Consensus is eight planes of various types were damaged, and many were close to retirement. Not the blazing accomplishment Ukraine would have one think.
Western officials said that Sunday's attacks would limit Moscow's ability to strike Ukrainian cities with cruise missiles.
However they cautioned that the operation would not change the situation on the battlefield, where Russia is capturing hundreds of square kilometres of territory every month.
The two surprise attacks bookended an unsuccessful round of peace talks in Istanbul, in which Moscow presented a peace settlement - largely unchanged since the start of negotiations - that Kyiv dismissed as tantamount to surrender.
In the aftermath of the bridge explosion, Lt Gen Vasyl Maliuk, the head of the SBU, said: "God loves a trinity, and the SBU always finishes what it starts and never repeats itself.
"We hit the Crimean Bridge twice before, in 2022 and 2023. Today, we continued that tradition - this time, from below the surface. There is no place on Ukrainian territory for Russia's illegal infrastructure."
Russian authorities said operations had been suspended for about three hours between 4am and 7am local time. It gave no reason for the temporary closure, but said the bridge had been reopened and was functioning as normal.
The 12-mile-long Kerch bridge, also known as the Crimean bridge, consists of a separate roadway and railway at the point where ships pass between the Black Sea and Azov Sea.
It allows the flow of troops and goods into Russian-occupied eastern and southern Ukrainian territories.
It is considered one of Kyiv's most desired military and symbolic targets of the war.
It also holds significant personal value to Vladimir Putin who sees it as a visible reminder of one his greatest political achievements - the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
The Russian president personally unveiled the bridge, leading a ceremonial convoy of trucks across it in 2018.
For Ukraine, the bridge is a hated symbol of Russia's illegal 11-year occupation of its lands.
Footage released by the SBU showed an explosion next to one of the many support pillars of the bridge. Pictures from the aftermath showed a chunk of the bridge's metal barriers lying across one of the lanes.
The bridge was previously targeted by Ukraine in 2022 using a truck bomb and in a sea drone strike in 2023. Both attacks caused extensive damage to the road section and sparked costly repairs.
Comment: But repaired it was, and it will be again. Russia doesn't need the Kerch Bridge to supply its forces (it never really did). See the Kyiv Post from 2023:
Russia Begins Construction of Ambitious Railroad Bypassing Vulnerable Crimea BridgeThese stunts are for Ukrainian PR purposes and all they do is harden Russia's resolve to decisively defeat Ukraine on the battlefield.
Russia's national railroad has started construction of a spur tying in to occupied territory in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region to increase control of the region and improve military logistics, a Ukrainian official said in a Wednesday Telegram statement.
The key link of the rail infrastructure project will be repairs to a bridge near the city Mariupol which - if and when completed - would enable rail shipments from deep inside Russia to frontline depots used by Moscow's forces, Mariupol Mayor-in-exile Petro Andrushchenko said.
[...]
Russian authorities also plan to develop a trunk link connecting the Ukrainian cities Mariupol, Volnovakha and Donetsk with the Russian railroad, so that full-scale freight and passenger traffic can move between Ukraine's occupied Donetsk region and points in Russia along the route Taganrog-Rostov, Andrushchenko said.
If completed the line would dramatically reduce rail traffic between Russia and occupied Crimea via the Kerch Bridge, and substantially ease Russian military logistics in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia sectors, he said.
The SBU said: "So today we continued this tradition underwater. There is no place for any illegal Russian facilities on the territory of our state."
On the battlefield, Ukrainian strikes overnight triggered power cuts over huge swathes of Russian-controlled territory, plunging hundreds of thousands of people into darkness.
The attacks on power substations, which came just hours after the peace talks failed to yield results, left entire towns and cities without electricity in the partially-occupied Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, complicating Russia's ability to wage war.
Comment: Tit-for-tat and perfectly legal. The stations power the trains that Ukraine uses to move men and machines around the battlefield. Thus they are legitimate targets. Note too, that Russia is strategically careful in its attacks. Ukraine has always been left with enough power to ensure the safe working of its nuclear power plants. Would the U.S. have such consideration?
On Tuesday, as senior Ukrainian officials flew to Washington for defence talks, Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of "deliberately" targeting civilians in the North-east region of Sumy.
A rocket attack on the city of Sumy, which lies just 18 miles from the Russian border, killed three people and injured at least 20.
Posting footage of destroyed cars and a body lying on the road, the Ukrainian president said the attack shows "everything one needs to know about Russia's so-called 'desire' to end this war".
I don't think it really hurts Russia but they sure want to tout it.
I think it's just mainly making the populace want to go all scorched earth