Ukraine strikes two key bridges into Russian-occupied Crimea with ‘UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles’ after Moscow targeted Ukrainian airbase with three waves of attacks

Ukrainian troops damaged two key bridges leading into Russian-occupied Crimea with ‘Storm Shadow missiles supplied by the UK’ today.

The Chonhar bridge linking mainland Ukraine to Crimea was damaged and a small bridge across the Tonky Strait was also shelled. 

Continuing attacks by Zelensky’s forces are making it increasingly hard for Putin’s invading army to get on and off the peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014. 

Crimea is of military importance to Moscow as well as a popular tourist destination for Russians. 

The missile strikes today came after Russia carried out three waves of attacks on Ukraine last night.

Ukraine’s Armed Forces hit the Chonhar bridge in the occupied Kherson region in southern Ukraine

The damage to the Chonhar road bridge. In June, Ukraine struck the same bridge, which lies on a route used by the Russian military to move between Crimea and other parts of Ukraine under its control

A firefighter works at a site of an attack, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, given as Starokostiantyniv, Khmelnytskyi Region, Ukraine, in this handout photo released on August 6, 2023

What are Storm Shadow missiles?

Storm Shadows are air-launched long range deep strike weapon designed by Matra BAe Dynamics ‘to meet the demanding requirements of pre-planned attacks against high value fixed or stationary targets’.

They can be used in extreme conditions and offers operators a highly flexible, deep-strike capability based around a sophisticated mission planning system.

A Typhoon armed with Storm Shadow missiles (File image)

Storm Shadow has been used by the RAF and the French Air Force, and was used in the Gulf, Iraq and Libya. 

Each missile weighs 204.7 st and is 16.7ft long.

The missiles have a range of more than 155 miles.

Source: MBDA Systems

Russian officials claimed the bridges were closed for repairs when they were hit by Ukrainian missiles.

Speaking of the damage to the bridge across the Tonky Strait, Kherson’s Moscow-appointed acting regional governor Vladimir Saldo said: ‘In total, the Kyiv terrorists fired 12 missiles. Nine were shot down by our air defence. 

‘One civilian was wounded, passing over the bridge at the time of arrival. 

‘The gas pipeline from the Strelkovskoye field to Genichesk, which ran next to the bridge, was also interrupted. 

‘More than 20,000 residents of the city were left without gas.’

In June, Ukraine struck the Chonhar bridge, which lies on a route used by the Russian military to move between Crimea and other parts of Ukraine under its control. 

On July 17, an attack attributed by Ukrainian media to Ukrainian sea drones damaged the Russian-built Crimean Bridge, which links the peninsula eastward to southern Russia, for the second time in less than a year, severely restricting road traffic during the summer holiday season.

On Sunday, Moscow unleashed a massive missile and drone barrage on western Ukraine, following through on its promise to retaliate for a Ukrainian attack on a Russian tanker.

Russian and Ukrainian shelling across the country overnight killed in at least six people, officials said.

Separately, Moscow’s second-largest airport briefly suspended flights early on Sunday following a foiled drone attack near the Russian capital.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 70 attack drones and missiles, including cruise missiles from aircraft over the Caspian Sea and Iranian-made, Shahed-136/131 strike UAVs.

Serhiy Tyurin, deputy head of Ukraine’s Khmelnytsky region military administration, said three waves of missiles hit the Starokostiantyniv area, damaging several buildings and igniting a fire at a warehouse. The strike may have been intended for the city’s airfield, officials said.

Zelensky said that a guided bomb had hit a blood transfusion centre in the area’s Kupyan district late on Saturday

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the facilities of aircraft engine manufacturer Motor Sich in the Zaporizhzhia region had also come under attack.

The Russian barrage came after a Ukrainian drone attack on a Russian tanker in the Black Sea near Crimea late on Friday.

Ukraine also struck a major Russian port with drones earlier the same day.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova condemned what she called a Ukrainian ‘terrorist attack’ on a civilian vessel in the Kerch Strait.

In a post on the Telegram messaging app, Zakharova said: ‘There can be no justification for such barbaric actions, they will not go unanswered and their authors and perpetrators will inevitably be punished.’

An official with Ukraine’s Security Service confirmed to The Associated Press that a Ukrainian drone packed with 450 kilograms (992 pounds) of explosive the service struck the tanker that as transporting fuel for Russian forces.

Russia’s Federal Agency for Marine and River Transport posted on Telegram that although the drone blasted a hole in the tanker’s engine room, there were no casualties among the 11 crew members.

Two of the six fatalities overnight on Sunday occurred during a Russian air strike in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, according to the head of the local regional military administration, Oleh Syniehubov.

Another four people were injured.

Zelensky said that a guided bomb had hit a blood transfusion centre in the area’s Kupyan district late on Saturday.

He said: ‘This war crime alone says everything about Russian aggression. Defeating terrorists is a matter of honour for everyone who values life.’

Heavy shelling continued along the frontline in Eastern Ukraine as Kyiv continues to push forward with its ongoing counter-offensive.

Elsewhere in the Kharkiv region, a 58-year-old woman was killed and a 66-year-old man was admitted to hospital after Russian shelling of the village of Podoly, an official said.

In Ukraine’s eastern Kupyan region, Russian missiles injured a 55-year-old man and ignited a forest fire, officials said on social media.

Russian attacks in the Donetsk region villages of Torske and Niu-York killed two people, local governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.

Ukrainian shelling in Russian-held Donetsk killed a woman in her eighties, the city’s Moscow-appointed mayor Alexei Kulemzin said.

The shelling also set the main building of a university on fire, according to the Moscow-installed head of the illegally annexed Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin.

Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said that the blaze caused the building’s roof to collapse, but that there were no casualties.

Moscow’s Vnukovo airport, located 15 kilometres (9 miles) southwest of the Russian capital, briefly suspended flights on Sunday morning after a drone was shot down in the airspace around the city.

Flights were last halted at the Russian airport on July 30, when two drones crashed into the Moscow City business district after being jammed by Russian air defences.

The attack on Sunday was one of four strikes on the Russian capital in the space of a month. 

The drone was destroyed by air defence systems in the Podolsk region of the Moscow suburbs, the Russian defence ministry said.

The Russian defence ministry added that no one was injured from the abortive drone attack. 

The reports could not be independently verified.

Video showed a Ukrainian Su-24 suspected to be carrying UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles

Ukrainian authorities, which generally avoid commenting on attacks on Russian soil, did not say whether it launched the raid. 

On the front line, Russia said on Saturday it had captured the settlement of Novoselivske in northeastern Ukraine, where Kyiv said it was confronted with a growing number of attacks.

Footage from the Russian army showed Novoselivske completely destroyed, with white smoke billowing over crumbling buildings.

Ukrainian army spokeswoman Ganna Malyar said on Friday that Russian troops were aiming to draw Ukrainian resources to the east, as Ukraine pursues its counter-offensive in the south.

Ukraine began a fresh attempt in June to push back Russian troops but it has made only modest progress, its forces contending with well-entrenched Russian positions built up over several months.

Firefighters extinguish a fire in the university building following a reported shelling in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in Donetsk, Russian-controlled Ukraine, on August 5, 2023

The damaged building of the University of Economics and Trade, which was reportedly hit by shelling in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in Donetsk, Russian-controlled Ukraine, August 6, 2023

A senior Ukrainian official said on Sunday that talks in Saudi Arabia to make headway towards a peaceful settlement of the war with Russia had been productive, but Moscow called the meeting a doomed attempt to swing the Global South behind Kyiv.

More than 40 countries, including China, India, the United States, and European nations, but not Russia, are taking part in the Jeddah talks that are expected to end on Sunday without any written concluding statement.

Ukraine and its allies have said the talks are an attempt to secure broad international support for principles that Kyiv wants to be the basis for peace, including the withdrawal of all Russian troops and the return of all Ukrainian territory to its control.

Zelensky has said he wants a global summit to take place based on those principles later this year.

Speaking about the Jeddah talks, Zelensky’s head of staff Andriy Yermak said in a statement: ‘We had very productive consultations on the key principles on which a just and lasting peace should be built.’

However, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted by state media on Sunday as saying the meeting was ‘a reflection of the West’s attempt to continue futile, doomed efforts’ to mobilise the Global South behind Zelensky’s position.