Traffic was moving again across the Kerch Bridge by the afternoon of June 3, only hours after Ukraine said it had hit the structure’s foundations with underwater explosives, the BBC reported. The crossing had been shut quickly, reopened, then closed a second time. BBC Verify geolocated the explosion to the eastern edge of the road bridge.
Kyiv and Moscow disagree on what the blast achieved. Ukraine’s security service says the bridge is “effectively in an emergency condition.” The Kremlin insists “nothing was damaged.”
What Ukraine says it did
The agency, whose name is rendered SSU by Ukrinform and SBU elsewhere, reported on Telegram that the operation took several months. Its agents planted explosives on the supports, and the first device went off at 4:44 on Tuesday morning. No civilians were hurt, the agency said. It put the total at 1,100 kg of explosives in TNT equivalent, which badly damaged the underwater parts of the supports at the bottom level.
Lieutenant General Vasyl Maliuk, the agency’s head, personally oversaw the planning and the operation. His statement was blunt: “God loves a trinity, and the SSU always completes what it starts and never repeats itself. We struck the Crimean Bridge twice before, in 2022 and 2023. Today, we continued the tradition, this time from underwater.”
He called the bridge “a completely legitimate target,” arguing that the enemy uses it as a logistics artery to supply its troops. “Crimea is Ukraine,” Maliuk said, “and any signs of occupation will receive a firm response from us.”
Third attack on the bridge
A truck bomb in October 2022 tore a hole in the deck. In July 2023, two “Sea Baby” naval drones carrying almost 1,900 pounds of explosives struck it again. The National Security Journal counts this as the third major assault, and notes that despite repairs, the bridge keeps showing its vulnerabilities.
The bridge is 19 kilometres long. Russia built it after annexing Crimea in 2014, and Vladimir Putin drove a truck across it at the 2018 opening, a gesture meant to say Crimea is Russian. Ukrainians see it as the embodiment of occupation, and the BBC calls it a hated symbol for them. Moscow uses it to supply its military in occupied parts of Ukraine. Ukraine has treated it as a legitimate military target since the full-scale invasion in 2022.
Two days after Spider’s Web
The strike followed the SBU’s Spiderweb operation of June 1, which Ukrinform says hit four Russian air bases (Belaya, Dyagilevo, Olenya and Ivanovo) at once and damaged 41 strategic aircraft, including A-50, Tu-95, Tu-22M3 and Tu-160 bombers. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine carried it out without help from foreign partners. According to the BBC, he described more than 100 smuggled drones hitting a third of Russia’s bomber planes.
Fighting went on elsewhere. Russian strikes on Sumy, in the north-east, reportedly killed four people and injured 28. The day before, the two sides had held a second round of peace talks and agreed another prisoner swap, though Ukrainian negotiators said Russia again turned down an “unconditional ceasefire.”
Sources
- SSU strikes again: Crimean Bridge hit underwater in third attack
- Ukraine Strikes Kerch Bridge Again with Massive Underwater Blast
- Crimea bridge reopens after Ukraine says it carried out underwater explosion
