Ukraine for the first time admitted to attacking and seriously damaging the Kerch bridge last Octoberthat unites Russia and Crimea, after having denied it for eight months before the accusations of Moscow. At the same time, it once again claimed responsibility for the sinking of the Moskva missile cruiser in the Black Sea in April 2022, in the early stages of the war, which Russia always refused to admit was the work of the Kiev military.
The Kerch bridge was badly damaged by the explosion of a truck-bomb, that also killed some motoristsand blocked the bridge for months before being repaired, except for a single lane that was reopened after about ten days.
Both announcements were made by the Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister, Hanna Malyar, who wanted to celebrate the symbolic expiration of the 500 days of war. “273 days from [que] we first hit the Crimean bridge to disrupt the logistics of the Russians,” he said on Telegram.
The recognition of responsibility for the attack occurred at the same time that the pro-Russian governor of Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, Serghey Aksionov, denounced an attempted missile attack by the Ukrainians in that same kerch bridgethe flagship of the Russian Federation after the annexation and strategically essential to connect the Crimean peninsula with the “motherland”, which would otherwise be isolated and left out, not only militarily, but also in terms of logistics and supply of goods and services.
Traffic on the bridge, particularly heavy, with more than 500 cars queuing towards the sea on the second Sunday in July, stopped for a few hours after it Aksionov reported on the demolition of a cruise missile near Kerch.
If the Ukrainian counter-offensive penetrates the Crimean borders, the destruction of the bridge would be a mandatory strategic move for kyiv. kyiv, meanwhile, registers a new advance in the sector of the martyred city of bakhmut, where the Russians have tens of thousands of men, who are slowly being squeezed in a circle from north and south.
“We are making progress,” said the commander of the Ukrainian Land Forces, Alexander Syrsky, by posting a video showing the work of a Ukrainian sniper. “Bakhmut direction. We are advancing, the defense forces continue to move forward and the enemy is trapped in some places.”
“We will fight again immediately,” vowed while the Ukrainian officers who defended for months the steel plant of Azovstal in Mariupol, handed over to the Russians in May 2022 and released by Moscow in Turkey.
Repatriated on a state plane with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr ZelenskyAfter his meeting with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul, the military, including Azov battalion commander Oleg Khomenk, took part in a press conference in Lviv on Saturday night.
Nearby, in Lutsk, in northwestern Ukraine, Zelensky, who is working all over the field to ensure a good trip for quick entry into the NATO On the eve of the summit in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, he received Polish President Andrzej Duda on an unannounced visit. “Memory unites us. Together we are stronger”, wrote the two Heads of State, commemorating the victims of the massacres perpetrated in Volyn between 1943 and 1945 by the Nazi occupiers with the complicity of Ukrainian nationalists against the Polish minority.
Poland, in particular, does not feel safe with the presence of the Wagner group militia group and its boss, Yevgeny Prgozhin, in neighboring Belarus, so it began moving troops to the eastern border. More than 1,000 soldiers and almost 200 equipment units of the 12th and 17th brigades are starting to move,” wrote Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Baszczak: “A response to destabilization attempts near our country’s border.”
More than 9,000 civilians killed
The United Nations Organization (UN) denounced the human cost of the war in Ukrainethat in his first 500 days was charged more than 9,000 civilian livesincluding those of half a thousand children.
In a statement from his human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine (HRMNU) released on Friday, the body acknowledges that the real number of victims of the conflict that began on February 24, 2022 is probably very superior.
“Today marks another grim milestone in the war that continues to take a horrible toll on the Ukrainian civilian population.”stated Noel Calhoundeputy head of the hrmnu.
At the end of 500 days of the war, the President of the United StatesJoe Biden authorized the shipment of cluster bombs for kyiv, but added that Ukraine, short of ammunition, “demanded and needed it.”
“This is a war related to ammunition. And they are running out of that ammunition, and we have little left,” the president said in an interview with CNN.
Source: Ambito
