July 9 (UPI) — A Ukrainian official made the starkest admission yet that Ukraine targeted the Kerch Strait Bridge linking Crimea to Russia in October as Russian officials in the Ukrainian province said Sunday that air defenses had shot down a cruise missile near the bridge.
Anna Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, said in a statement on Telegram that it has been 273 days since Ukrainians “struck the first blow on the Crimean bridge in order to break the logistics of the Russians.”
Maliar made her remarks while celebrating other accomplishments of the Ukrainian military on the 500th day of the unprovoked war, including the sinking of the Russian cruiser Moskva and the liberation of Snake Island in the Black Sea — which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Saturday.
Vladimir Rogov, the Russia-installed head of Crimea, said in a statement on Telegram that traffic on the bridge has been temporarily stopped for what he called “an attempt by the Nazis to attack.” The Kremlin has repeatedly resorted to calling Ukrainians Nazis as part of their war propaganda.
Rogov shared a video of a missile apparently being shot down.
Maliar’s admission for the October blast marks the clearest confirmation Ukraine has made that it had targeted Russia on what Russia considers its soil.
The bridge was built by Russia after Crimea was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014 in the lead-up to the current war. Three people died when a truck exploded on the bridge, leading to a fire on a freight train carrying fuel and a partial bridge collapse.
“According to the norms of our current legislation and international, customs and traditions of warfare, and taking into account the fact that it was a logistical route that we were obliged to cut to the enemy, certain such measures were carried out,” Vasyl Maliuk, the chief of the Security Service of Ukraine, said in a documentary earlier this year.
Russian war bloggers ripped Russian President Vladimir Putin for not publicly commenting on the damage to the bridge and calling for revenge in the aftermath of the October blast.
“The Russian Federation is simply hit on the cheek and spit into an obediently open mouth,” one Russian blogger wrote on Telegram at the time.
“There are no such public responses for the results of activities, because the Russian Federation is run by traitors and degenerates. Degenerates and traitors.”