LONDON, April 3./TASS/. Ukraine is planning a new attack on the Crimean Bridge that may take place in the first half of this year, The Guardian claims, referring to sources from the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR).
The paper itself has doubts about whether the Ukrainian intelligence agency is currently capable of conducting such attacks.
Nevertheless, GUR Head Kirill Budanov already has most of the means to carry out this goal, the Guardian quoted an official as saying.
Two terrorist attacks on the bridge
The Crimean Bridge has already been hit twice. On October 8, 2022 a truck exploded on the bridge setting fire to the cisterns of a freight train. Four people were killed and two segments of the bridge’s road section going towards the peninsula collapsed.
In the second incident, two Ukrainian sea drones attacked the bridge overnight to July 17, 2023. Two adults were killed and a child was injured. The roadway was damaged as a result of the terrorist attack.
New attacks plotted
RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said on March 1 that on the very day that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was giving assurances that NATO was not now and would not in the future be directly involved in the Ukraine conflict, Germany’s top brass was in fact mulling how to carry out a potential attack on the Crimean Bridge in a way that would have no repercussions for Berlin by giving it the cover of plausible deniability. Simonyan said she had a corroborating audio recording of the Bundeswehr officers’ conversation in her possession. She later released a transcript of it, which makes it clear that the military officers discussed the Taurus missiles’ capability to hit and destroy the Crimean Bridge and the tactical details involved in preparing such an attack.
In mid-March, Russian Plenipotentiary Presidential Representative in the Southern Federal District Vladimir Ustinov told TASS that Kiev was seeking to destabilize the situation on the Crimean peninsula through attacks on energy and industry facilities.