Ukraine has launched an audacious underwater attack on Putin‘s prized Kerch Bridge to Crimea with Kyiv claiming the link has been left in a ‘state of disrepair’.
Around 2,500 pounds of explosives detonated early this morning, damaging underwater pillars of the 12-mile-long bridge, a key supply route for Russian forces invading Ukraine.
Footage showed smoke billowing over the bridge after the blast caused the entire structure to shake. Russian forces were forced to quickly close the bridge to traffic.
It comes as the Ukraine war continues to spiral out of control amid stalling peace talks.
The latest attack in Crimea follows an audacious blitz by Volodmyr Zelensky on Vladimir Putin’s nuclear-capable long-range bomber fleet on Sunday.
The 117-aircraft operation codenamed ‘Spider’s Web’ – Ukraine’s largest drone attack of the war – struck airfields in Siberia and the far north of the country.
It comes amid fears that Putin will take the nuclear option as Ukraine’s forces continue to push his troops back on the battlefield.
Russia told Ukraine at peace talks on Monday that it would only agree to end the war if Kyiv gives up big new chunks of territory and accepts limits on the size of its army.
The terms, formally presented at negotiations in Istanbul, highlighted Moscow’s refusal to compromise on its longstanding war goals despite calls by Donald Trump to end the ‘bloodbath’ in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s SBU security service said on Tuesday it had hit the road and rail bridge linking Russia and the Crimean peninsula
Britain would be unable to fend off a savage onslaught of missiles and drones should Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin seek to bombard Britain with them
Following the Kerch Bridge attack in Crimea today, Ukraine’s Lieutenant General Vasyl Malyuk said: ‘We previously hit the Crimean Bridge twice in 2022 and 2023. So today we continued this tradition underwater. No illegal Russian facilities have a place on the territory of our state.
‘Therefore, the Crimean Bridge is a completely legitimate target, especially considering that the enemy used it as a logistical artery to supply its troops.
‘Crimea is Ukraine, and any manifestations of occupation will receive our tough response.’
Russian forces temporarily closed the bridge this morning, according to Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda.
No casualties have been reported.
It comes after Ukrainian drones struck multiple military airbases in Russia on Sunday.
The attacks occurred in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan, and Amur regions.
Dubbed ‘Operation Spiderweb’, the co-ordinated strikes left Vladimir Putin humiliated and his prized warplanes in smouldering ruins.
Back in 2023, the Kremlin downed two Ukrainian missiles that were aimed at Russia’s Kerch bridge to Crimea.
In 2022, a part of the bridge was blown up after a truck exploded on it, with Russia blaming the blast on Ukraine.
The crossing carries heavy significance for Moscow, both logistically and psychologically, as a key artery for military and civilian supplies and as an assertion of Kremlin control of the peninsula it illegally annexed in 2014.
The attack on the Kerch bridge comes a day after delegations from Kyiv and Moscow held a second round of direct talks on the possibility of ending the war in Ukraine.
The two sides exchanged their visions of what a peace settlement could look like at the negotiations, mediated by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, which once again did not yield a ceasefire.
Despite the flurry of diplomacy urged on by US President Donald Trump, their demands have thus far been irreconcilable.
Flames and smoke rise from a bridge connecting Crimea and Russia in Kerch, on the Crimean peninsula, Oct. 8, 2022
Smoke is billowing over the Russia’s Kerch Bridge to Crimea – as the Kremlin claims to have shot down two Ukrainian missiles aimed at the crucial link to the annexed peninsula, August 2023
Hours after the talks concluded, Russian state news agencies published the full list of Moscow’s peace terms that confirmed its maximalist claims.
Russia has repeatedly demanded it retains territory in southern and eastern Ukraine that it occupies and for Kyiv to cede even more land.
Moscow in 2022 annexed four Ukrainian regions – Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – despite not having full control over them.
In its roadmap to peace, something what Russia calls a ‘memorandum’, it demanded Ukraine to pull its forces out of parts of those regions that its army still controls as a prerequisite to any peace settlement.
Russian Belaya Air Base in Irkutsk region, Siberia, was ablaze on Sunday after a drone strike by Ukraine
Russia also annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and fully controls it since then.
Ukraine has said it will never recognise its occupied territories, including Crimea, as Russian.
But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Kyiv may be forced to try to secure their return through diplomatic means – effectively conceding that Russia could maintain control over some land in any peace deal.
The Russian memorandum starts from a clause saying that all Moscow-occupied territories in Ukraine must be recognized.
This is a breaking news story, more to follow.
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