Thursday Ukraine he claimed the attacks carried out last July on the bridge that connects Russian territory to Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula that Russia has militarily occupied since 2014. The Russian government immediately accused Ukraine of having attacked the bridge, but the Ukrainian authorities had never admitted no responsibility: something Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the Ukrainian Defense Council did on Thursday, adding that with these attacks Ukraine would show how some targets considered by Russia to be completely safe are not “untouchable”.
The bridge in question crosses the Kerch Strait and is about 18 kilometers long. For Russia it is a particularly important infrastructure both from a symbolic point of view and from a military and strategic point of view: it represents control over Crimea and is also a fundamental passageway for soldiers and military vehicles going to Crimea from Russia. and from there to the front in southeast Ukraine.
On July 17, there were explosions on the bridge which Russia attributed to Ukraine and which led to its temporary closure. A few days later the bridge was closed to traffic again after an alleged attack on an ammunition depot in the Crimea for which Russia had always blamed the Ukrainian army. Only a few weeks earlier, the Ukrainian government had claimed responsibility for the first time for the explosion that on 8 October 2022 had caused the partial collapse of the bridge, causing five deaths and an interruption of traffic for several weeks.