Reuters
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Kerch Bridge in Crimea must be "neutralized."
- Zelenskyy said the bridge is a legitimate military target as Russia uses it to "feed the war."
- The bridge opened in 2018 and links the illegally occupied Crimean peninsula with Russia.
Ukrainian officials are done being coy about Crimea and whether they are responsible for attacks on the bridge linking the strategically important peninsula to Russia.
Opened in 2018, four years after Moscow illegally occupied and annexed Crimea, the Kerch Bridge is about 12 miles long and carries not just cars but rail traffic. Since last year's full-scale invasion, it has been attacked twice: last October, with a bomb placed inside a truck — an attack that Ukraine only acknowledged responsibility for this month — and before dawn on Monday, when Russian authorities say it was attacked by a pair of Ukrainian drones.
In remarks to the Aspen Security Forum, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, speaking by video link, said Friday evening that the bridge is a legitimate military target.
He suggested that taking it out is key to Ukraine's own ambitions, which include taking back all land occupied since 2014, when a popular uprising ousted the country's former pro-Moscow president, leading the Kremlin to seize the Crimean peninsula, which is home to a Russian naval base and provides the country direct access to the Black Sea.
"The objective is to reclaim all of Crimea because it is our sovereign territory, an unalienable part of our nation," Zelenskyy said Friday. "And the Crimean bridge, this is not just a logistical road — this is the road used to feed the war, with ammunition, and this has been done on a daily basis."
Russia has labeled the attacks on the bridge "terrorist" acts. President Vladimir Putin himself described the latest assault as a "crime" that killed "blameless civilians," claiming the Kerch bridge "hasn't been used for military means in a long time." In fact, according to the Associated Press, the bridge serves as a "critical" connection between Moscow and Russian forces operating in southern Ukraine.
Zelenskyy described the bridge Friday as "an enemy facility" that was built in defiance of international law. "So, understandably, this is our objective," he said. "Any objective, any target that is bringing war, not peace, has to be neutralized."
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