Shaun
A bridge linking Russia and Crimea has been blown up in a massive explosion carried out by Ukraine’s special forces. The 12-mile-long Crimean Bridge, or Kerch Bridge, links Russia with the occupied peninsula which Russian troops annexed in 2014. Footage showed an underwater explosion destroying a pillar of the bridge as Ukraine’s SBU vowed there was “no place for any illegal Russian facilities on the territory of our state”.
The SBU said it rigged the bridge’s pillars with 1,100kg of explosives. “The Crimean Bridge is an absolutely legitimate target, especially considering that the enemy used it as a logistical artery to supply its troops,” it said.
It comes after Moscow told Ukraine that it would only agree to end the war if Kyiv gives up big chunks of territory and accepts limits on the size of its army, according to a memorandum.
Ukraine has rejected the Russian conditions as tantamount to surrender, and called for further Western sanctions on the Kremlin after a missile attack killed three and injured dozens in Sumy on Tuesday.
Nato’s Baltic drills are part of the alliance’s preparations for a potential military clash with Russia, the country’s deputy foreign inister Alexander Grushko said, Tass reported this morning.
“We assess Nato’s military activity as part of preparations for military clashes with Russia,” Mr Grushko said.
Baltops – Nato’s annual exercise in the Baltic Sea and the regions surrounding it – is being held this month.
The multinational maritime exercise is designed to improve US/Nato operational capacity, capability and interoperability to include conducting multinational training with Nato allies.
“If we look at the focus of these exercises, the concept, the structure of the deployment of forces, the forces themselves, their quality, the tasks that are formulated for these exercises, then this is a fight against a comparable adversary,” Mr Grushko said according to TASS.
Ukraine’s security services, the SBU, said on Tuesday that it had hit the Kerch road and rail bridge linking Russia and the Crimean peninsula with explosives below the water level.
In a statement, the SBU said it had used 1,100kg of explosives that were detonated early in the morning and damaged underwater pillars of the bridge, which has been a key supply route for Russian forces in Ukraine.
The official Russian outlet that provides regular status updates on the bridge said its operation had been suspended for about three hours between 4am and 7am local time.
Senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said that the point of holding peace talks with Ukraine was to ensure a swift and complete Russian victory.
“The Istanbul talks are not for striking a compromise peace on someone else’s delusional terms but for ensuring our swift victory and the complete destruction of the neo-Nazi regime,” the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council said on Telegram yesterday.
Vladimir Putin and his aides have repeatedly make baseless claims about the Ukrainian government being led by “neo-Nazis” despite Volodymyr Zelensky’s Jewish background.
“That’s what the Russian Memorandum published yesterday is about,” he said, referring to a set of Russian demands presented to Ukraine at talks in Istanbul on Monday.
They included handing over more territory, becoming a neutral country, accepting limits on the size of the Ukrainian army and holding new parliamentary and presidential elections.
He also vowed revenge on behalf of Moscow over Ukraine’s weekend strikes on Russian strategic bomber bases. “Retribution is inevitable,” he said.
“Our Army is pushing forward and will continue to advance. Everything that needs to be blown up will be blown up, and those who must be eliminated will be.”
