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Ukraine bombed a bridge this week that is vital to Russian soldiers occupying the town of Kherson, part of an apparent strategy to cut off the supply lines sustaining Russian troops.
Ukrainian forces shelled the Antonovsky bridge overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday with US-supplied rockets, targeting a main crossing linking Kherson to the Dnipro River’s southern bank and the rest of the region, which is now almost entirely controlled by Russia.
British defence officials said the city is now “virtually cut off from other occupied territories”, the BBC reported.
Ukrainian forces used the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), supplied by the United States and remarkable for their precision strikes, to target the bridge.
To counter the effects of the Ukrainian strikes on supply chain problems, Russia has been using and floating bridges, said Huseyn Aliyev, a specialist in Ukraine-Russia conflict at Glasgow University. However, these structures are much more fragile and narrower than traditional bridges, which slows down the arrival of supplies, he said.
Strategically located between the Dnipro River and the Black Sea to the west, Kherson became the first Ukrainian city to fall under Russian control back in March.
While the Antonovsky bridge is the main gateway to Kherson from the south, Ukrainian forces also shelled a smaller bridge 70km to the northeast of the city. According to Sim Tack, an analyst at conflict-monitoring firm Force Analysis, this second bridge is an important access route that allows the transit of Russian troops and supplies from Nova Kakhovka, another city in Kherson Oblast in southern Ukraine.
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Source : france24
