By Chris Summers
Contributing Writer
Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service says it has severely damaged the Kerch Bridge, which links Russia with Crimea.
On its Telegram channel, the service said: “The SBU conducted a new unique special operation and struck the Crimean Bridge for the third time — this time underwater!”
It comes only two days after the SBU pulled off a surprise drone attack on four Russian airbases, one of which was 2,670 miles from the frontline.
Posting details on Telegram beneath a video showing an explosion underneath the bridge, the service said: “The operation lasted several months. SBU agents mined the supports of this illegal facility. And today, without any casualties among the civilian population, at 4:44 in the morning, the first explosive device was activated!”
The SBU said the underwater supports of the bridge’s pillars were “severely damaged” by explosives that were the equivalent of 1,100 kilograms of TNT.
It is unclear whether Russia has closed the 12-mile bridge following the attack.
The head of the SBU, Lt. Gen. Vasyl Malyuk, was reported to have personally supervised the operation.
The SBU added, “God loves the Trinity, and the SBU always brings what is conceived to the end and never repeats itself. Previously, we struck the Crimean Bridge twice in 2022 and 2023. So today we continued this tradition underwater.”
It described an “illegal Russian facility” on Ukrainian territory.
Malyuk said, “Crimea is Ukraine, and any manifestations of occupation will receive our tough response.”
The bridge was constructed after Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 and was opened in 2018.
It connects the Russian mainland and the Crimean Peninsula over the Kerch Strait, and allows Russia to resupply civilians and military without having to pass through mainland Ukraine.
On Oct. 8, 2022, Ukraine first attacked the bridge with a truck bomb, causing relatively minor damage.
Putin visited the bridge on Dec. 5, 2022, after it had been repaired.
It was damaged again in another attack by Ukrainian saboteurs in July 2023.
The incident comes only days after the SBU masterminded Operation Spiderweb, a covert attack that may have caused billions of dollars’ worth of damage to Russia’s fleet of long-range bombers.
The attack on Russia’s strategic air fleets took a year and a half to plan and set in place, and involved smuggling more than 100 first-person view drones into Russia across multiple time zones.
During that time, Ukrainian security services hid the drones and their high-explosive payloads in the roofs of wooden sheds, which were then carried by trucks throughout Russia.
On Sunday, the roofs of those sheds were lifted off by a remote mechanism, allowing the drones to fly out and strike at their targets simultaneously despite their distance from one another.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that 117 drones were used in the operation, which struck targets at four military airfields and caused significant damage to Russia’s fleet of air missile carriers.
The Kremlin has yet to comment publicly on Operation Spiderweb or the attack on the Kerch bridge.
Andrew Thornebrooke and Ryan Morgan contributed to this report.
