Ukraine fighting seeps past lines
War nearing a new phase
Ukrainian forces struck two bridges connecting Russian-occupied Crimea to the rest of Ukraine Sunday, part of a broader pattern of attacks on and around the peninsula that has sought to scramble crucial supply routes for the Kremlin and push the scope of the war into fresh territory.
One of the strikes tore three holes in the roadway of the Chonhar Bridge, which links Crimea to the Russian-occupied Kherson region, forcing it to close to traffic, according to the Russian-backed governor of the region, Vladimir Saldo. The same bridge was struck by Ukrainian forces in June, Russian-backed officials said.
Sunday’s attacks also injured a driver and closed traffic on a second bridge to the east of Chonhar, near the small town of Henichesk, Saldo said. A gas pipeline near the bridge was damaged, cutting off supplies to more than 20,000 people, he added.
The load-bearing structure of the Chonhar bridge was not damaged, and traffic on the Henichesk bridge was to be restored by the end of the day, Saldo said. His claims about the extent of the damage could not be independently verified.
Ukraine’s armed forces took credit for both strikes Sunday, in another departure from their typically coy approach as President Volodymyr Zelensky and other top officials emphasize that their new aim is to force ordinary Russians to face up to the Kremlin’s war.
The bridge attacks came the same day that Russian air defenses shot down a hostile drone that had been approaching Moscow, according to a brief statement on the Telegram messaging app posted by the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin. The claim has not been independently verified, and Ukrainian officials did not immediately comment. At the same time, the Vnukovo airport, which serves Moscow, temporarily suspended flights for “security reasons,” according to a Telegram post from the Russian state news agency Tass.
Russian authorities gave no further details about the drone Sunday. But this past week, they accused Ukraine of twice launching drone strikes that damaged a high-rise in Moscow housing government ministries. Those appeared to be part of an increasingly brazen pattern of attacks on Russian territory including one, in May, in which a drone struck the Kremlin.
Russia has taken steps to intensify attacks on different areas of Ukraine. For a year, the port city of Odesa, crucial before the war for exports of Ukrainian grain, was largely spared Russian strikes. But since Moscow terminated a wartime deal three weeks ago that had allowed Ukraine to continue to ship its grain and other foodstuffs across the Black Sea, Russian forces have struck the port repeatedly, damaging facilities and grain stocks.
In addition, Russian missiles have struck Ukraine’s ports on the Danube River in recent days. The ports, while smaller than the one at Odesa, provide a crucial alternative export route for millions of tons of grain. Again, the aim appeared to be to complicate the transport of crops important both for Ukraine’s economy and for global markets.
Despite the high toll of the war on both countries’ militaries and on Ukrainian civilians — more than 9,000 of whom have been killed, according to United Nations data — talks to end the fighting have yet to yield any significant progress.