Ukrainian forces attacked and badly damaged a bridge that is essential for supplying Russian troops in southern Ukraine, a regional official said on Wednesday, as Russian shelling killed civilians, including a 13-year-old boy. years, in the northeast of the besieged country.
Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the Moscow-backed temporary administration for the Russian-controlled Kherson region, said the Ukrainian army on Wednesday hit the Antonivskyi bridge, which crosses the Dnieper, with missiles, hitting it 11 time.
He added in remarks by the Interfax news agency that the 1.4 kilometer bridge had suffered severe damage, but was not closed to traffic. Stremousov said Ukrainian forces used US-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, adding that some of them were intercepted by Russian air defenses.
“The bridge has not been closed, traffic is still crossing it, but the situation is serious,” Stremousov said, according to Interfax.
The bridge is the main crossing over the Dnieper River in the Kherson region. Eliminating it would make it difficult for the Russian military to continue supplying its forces in the region amid repeated Ukrainian attacks.
Moscow-appointed Kherson administration chief Vladimir Saldo said in a video message that passenger vehicles were allowed to continue crossing the bridge, but truck traffic was halted to allow for quick repairs. He noted that trucks could cross the river using a dam about 80 kilometers away.
The bombing of the bridge on Wednesday was the second in as many days. It had been slightly damaged by Ukrainian shelling a day earlier, according to Moscow-backed authorities in Kherson.
At the start of the war, Russian troops quickly overran the Kherson region, just north of the Crimean peninsula which Russia annexed in 2014. They faced Ukrainian counterattacks, but largely held their ground. .
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with state television RT and the RIA Novosti news agency published on Wednesday that Russia has expanded the scope of its “special military operation” in Ukraine from the Donetsk regions. and Lugansk supported by Moscow in the east, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions and other territories.
He noted that when Russia and Ukraine discussed a possible agreement to end hostilities in March, “our willingness to accept the Ukrainian proposal was based on the geography of March 2022.”
“Now it’s a different geography,” he clarified, while repeating Moscow’s earlier assertions that the US and UK were interested in expanding hostilities.
Mr. Lavrov said that “they want to turn it into a real war and provoke a confrontation between Russia and European countries”.
He claimed that the United States was preventing Ukraine from entering into talks on a possible settlement with Russia.
“They prevent them from taking constructive action and not only inject weapons, but force them to use these weapons in increasingly risky ways,” Lavrov said.
Meanwhile, in a sign of the crippling economic impact of war on Ukraine, a resolution by its government says the country will ask investors to allow it to defer payment of its external debt for two years.
Fighting in the Donbass
The Ukrainian attacks on the Kherson bridge come as the bulk of Russian forces are locked in fighting in Donbass, the industrial heartland of eastern Ukraine, where they have made slow gains in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance .
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu inspected troops in the east, ordering them to act more aggressively to shoot down Ukrainian drones and prevent the Ukrainian military from bombing areas captured by Russian forces.
Russia’s ground advance has slowed, partly because Ukraine is using more effective US weapons and partly because of what Russian President Vladimir Putin has called an “operational pause.” Russia is focusing more on aerial bombardment using long-range missiles.
Ukrainian officials expressed hope that kyiv could drain Russian military resources in the fight for Donbass and then launch a counter-offensive to regain control of the Kherson region and parts of the Zaporizhia region that the Russians have seized at the start of the war.
With indications that Ukraine is planning counterattacks to retake occupied areas, the Russian military has in recent weeks targeted the Black Sea port of Odessa and parts of southern Ukraine where its troops have captured cities earlier in the war.
Kherson – site of a major shipbuilding industry at the confluence of the Dnieper and the Black Sea near Russian annexed Crimea – is one of several areas that a US government spokesman said Russia tried to annex.
After months of local rumors and announcements about a Russian referendum, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday that US intelligence officials had amassed “ample” new evidence. that Russia was officially considering annexing additional Ukrainian territory and could organize a bogus vote as early as September.
Russia is eyeing Kherson as well as all of the Lugansk and Donetsk oblasts.
“Russia is preparing the ground to annex Ukrainian territory it controls in direct violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty,” Kirby said in Washington.
Mr. Kirby added that the White House is expected to announce even more military aid to Ukraine later this week. The aid is expected to include more HIMARS systems, a critical weapon that Ukrainian forces are successfully using in their fight to fend off Russian troops.
While continuing their offensive in Donbass, Russian forces also bombarded large areas in the east and elsewhere across Ukraine with missile strikes and artillery barrages.
Ukraine’s presidential office revealed that at least 13 civilians had been killed and 40 others injured by Russian shelling across the country in 24 hours.
On Wednesday, at least three more people died when Russia bombed the northeastern city of Kharkiv, authorities said.
The victims were a 69-year-old man and his wife and a 13-year-old boy who were waiting at a bus stop. The boy’s 15-year-old sister was injured according to the Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office.