Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, said on Tuesday that it had hit the bridge connecting Russia and the occupied Crimean Peninsula with explosives planted underwater.
“The Security Service of Ukraine carried out a new unique special operation and struck the Crimean Bridge for the third time – this time underwater!” the SBU wrote on Telegram.
The operation came after the SBU on Sunday launched an audacious air raid on Russia’s fleet of nuclear-capable strategic bombers.
The SBU said its agents had mined the piers of the road-and-rail Crimean Bridge, also called the Kerch Bridge, and detonated the first explosive at 4.44 a.m. Tuesday. The whole operation had taken several months, it added.
The agency said it had used 1,100 kilograms of explosives which “severely damaged” the underwater pillars supporting the bridge.
Russian officials did not immediately respond to Ukraine’s claim. Earlier Tuesday, the bridge operator’s official Telegram account announced that traffic on the bridge had been temporarily suspended. By 9 a.m. local time, it said normal traffic had been resumed.
Built following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, the 12-mile bridge was a vital supply line for Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine and a personal project for President Vladimir Putin, embodying his objective to bind the Ukrainian peninsula to Russia.
Tuesday’s attack marks the third time that Ukraine has targeted the bridge since Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022. In October of that year, a fuel truck exploded on the bridge, engulfing a part of it in flames. In July 2023, the SBU said it had blown up a part of the bridge using an experimental sea drone. Both times, Russia moved quickly to repair the damaged sections.
“God loves the Trinity, and the SBU always sees things through to the end and never does the same thing twice. We previously struck the Crimean Bridge twice, in 2022 and 2023. So today we continued this tradition, this time underwater,” said Vasyl Malyuk, the head of the SBU, on Tuesday.
This is a developing story and will be updated.