Ukrainian missiles hit one of the few bridges linking the Crimean peninsula to the Ukrainian mainland on Thursday, cutting off one of the main supply routes for Russian occupation forces in southern Ukraine, Russian-appointed officials said.
Meanwhile, on the eastern front, Ukrainian forces held back Russian troops and have not allowed them to advance "a single meter," Ukraine's Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said on Telegram.
Maliar added that Ukrainian forces on the southern front, where several villages were retaken last week, were "gradually advancing. We have been partially successful. We are driving the enemy back and leveling the front line."
Ukraine is attacking Russian supply lines to disrupt Moscow's defense of occupied territory in the south, where Kyiv is in the early stages of its most ambitious counteroffensive since the war began 16 months ago.
Kyiv says it has retaken eight villages so far, but has yet to commit most of its forces to the fight and its troops have yet to reach the main Russian defensive lines.
Vladimir Saldo, head of the Russian-installed administration in the occupied Kherson province, posted a video of himself on the Chongar highway bridge where craters could be seen in the asphalt.
"Another senseless act perpetrated by the Kyiv regime on the orders of London. It does not solve anything in regards to the special military operation," he said, vowing to repair the bridge and restore traffic. Ukraine did not claim responsibility for the attack on the bridge.
The bridge is one of the few access roads to the Crimean peninsula, which is linked to the Ukrainian mainland by a narrow isthmus. Alternative routes require detours of hours on roads in poor condition. Russia's RIA news agency quoted transport officials as saying repairing the bridge could take weeks.
The bridge is out of range of the battlefield rockets Ukraine has used for a year, but is within range of newly deployed weapons such as British and French cruise missiles, allowing Kyiv to reach logistical routes that Russia considered safe only a few weeks ago.
The attack was "a blow to the military logistics of the occupiers," said Yuriy Sobolevsky, a Ukrainian official in the governing body of the Jershon region. "There is no place in the territory of the Jerson region where they can feel safe," he added.
Russian military investigators say Ukrainian forces fired four missiles at the bridge, RIA reported, citing a spokesman who added that markings on one of the missiles suggested it was made in France.
Returning to the front lines, Maliard said the fighting in the Lyman sector in the northern Donetsk region was "the most difficult". In the south, Ukrainian forces continued their offensive with the aim of advancing towards the city of Melitopol in the Zaporizhia region and the port of Berdyansk on the Azov Sea.
Russia, for its part, claims to have defended itself against the Ukrainian counterattack and to have inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy, something Ukraine denies. The leader of the Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, accused Russian army leaders of lying to President Vladimir Putin and the Russian people about the extent of losses and Russian setbacks in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that progress has been slow so far, but said his troops were cautiously advancing into heavily mined and well-defended areas to minimize losses.
Zelensky on Thursday accused Russia of planning a terror attack against Europe's largest Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, which is located on Russian-controlled territory near the front line.
In a video statement on Telegram, the Ukrainian president said that Moscow had prepared an attack that would release radiation from the plant, but did not provide any evidence.
Zelensky also claimed in his late-night speech that Russia had formed teams to collect and hide the bodies of people who died in the Kakhovka dam collapse earlier this month in southern Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of being behind the dam breach.
For his part, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres criticized Russia on Thursday for killing 136 children in Ukraine in 2022, adding its armed forces to a global list of criminals, according to a report by the Council of UN Security as seen by Reuters on children and armed conflict. Russia has denied attacking civilians since it invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
