NYT: Russia turns to striking Kyiv’s bridges

Russia has a new target on its rapidly growing list of Ukrainian infrastructure to bomb: bridges, The New York Times writes.

Over the past three days, Russia has attacked bridges in the capital, Kyiv, six times. Three drones hit one in the city’s south on Thursday, and the same bridge was struck twice on Friday. On Saturday morning, another attack hit a bridge in the north.

The structures still stand, but the damage and the threat of more attacks have prompted the local authorities to restrict or stop traffic on five of the capital’s six road bridges. That has severely disrupted daily life in Ukraine’s largest city, which, like much of the country, is bisected by the broad Dnipro River.

Many in Kyiv commute between the mostly residential eastern bank, home to roughly a million people, and the western bank, where most government offices and businesses are located.

The bridges are the latest target in a sweeping Russian strike campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure that is far from the front lines. That campaign has expanded in recent weeks to include warehouses, trains, data centers, medical depots and steel factories and comes on top of an intense assault on Ukraine’s power grid that Russia plans to escalate this winter.

The goal, Ukrainian officials and military experts say, is to devastate Ukraine’s economy — and the country’s ability to sustain the war effort — while breaking the population’s will to fight by making everyday life increasingly difficult.

Drones now buzz over the city all day, setting off near-constant air raid alerts. People caught outside during an attack can be seen checking phone apps that track the drones’ flight paths. On Monday, a drone hit a university in the city center and set the building ablaze, shocking residents of a neighborhood that had been spared Russian attacks for most of the war.

The assault on Kyiv’s bridges could disrupt life even more. Officials temporarily shut the northern bridge after Saturday’s attack, closed the southern bridge to cars and the metro, and limited traffic on three other bridges.

The first attack on the southern bridge, on Thursday, happened as a metro train was crossing the bridge. No one was injured, but service across the bridge was suspended. On Friday evening, residents crossing the bridge on foot watched as another drone struck it, according to a video posted on social media.

Destroying the bridges would be difficult. They are large concrete structures that would need to be hit multiple times to be taken down.

Still, attacks could weaken the bridges’ supporting structures and prompt the authorities to close them indefinitely rather than risk a collapse.

The result would be a logistical nightmare for Kyiv and the whole country. Bridges in the capital carry all kinds of food and equipment across the Dnipro River, which runs north to south through Ukraine and splits the country in two. There would be few alternatives if they closed.

One road bridge crosses the river north of Kyiv. To the south, the nearest is about 90 kilometers, or 55 miles, away, a roughly 2.5-hour drive. More bridges lie farther downriver, but using them would mean a long detour, and their proximity to the southern front leaves them even more exposed to Russian attacks.

This year, Ukraine’s massive strikes against Russia’s rear areas and rear cities have effectively removed all restrictions to launching retaliatory strikes. As President Vladimir Putin said at the Valdai Discussion Club forum, Russian armed forces have begun to disrupt the enemy’s strategic logistics. This also applies to the Black Sea ports and the blocking of the movement of enemy vessels that deliver military cargo to Ukrainian ports. Now this also applies to the bridges across the Dnieper.

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