The footage is short and repetitive. One first-person-view drone after another comes down on the surface of a bridge that Russian forces in the south depend on. Ukraine’s 1st Separate Assault Regiment posted such clips over five days and says the strikes ran across the past week.
The regiment named three areas: Armyansk, Henichesk and Chonhar. Crimea connects to the southern front through these chokepoints. The bridges there lie between 50 and 75 miles from the front lines, and they have carried much of the traffic feeding Russian positions in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
Some attacks were coordinated with the 475th Assault Regiment and the elite Alpha unit of Ukraine’s Security Service. In its own words, the regiment hit “the only way of delivery of Russian soldiers, ammunition, and fuel from the temporarily occupied Crimea.”
The drones involved
Two mid-range models were used. The FirePoint FP-2 spans 18 feet and carries a 220-pound explosive payload. The Hippo is smaller, with a 7.5-foot wingspan, and holds a 77-pound thermobaric charge along with 88 pounds of explosives.
Mid-range drones are new to the Ukrainian toolkit. They fly farther and hit harder than the grenade-carrying quadcopters common at the front, and they are cheaper to produce than the long-distance drones aimed at Russia’s military-industrial base. Before them, Ukraine mostly went after Russian supply bridges through sabotage or artillery such as the American HIMARS.
Damage on the ground
Several clips show at least two bridges burning, with severe structural damage in some places. Business Insider could not independently verify the footage, but officials on the Russian-installed side have acknowledged the strikes.
Vladimir Saldo, the Kremlin-appointed governor of Kherson, said Armyansk’s bridges had come under at least 45 drone attacks as of Thursday. “According to preliminary reports, some damage has occurred,” he wrote. Earlier in the week he had reported roughly 20 attacks on the Chonhar bridge and closed traffic there. His office later proposed detours and said civilian passenger buses would be halted because of a fuel shortage.
