Ukraine chokes Crimea with devastating bridge attacks as Putin's missile mastermind assassinated

We'll start with the bridges into Crimea.

Russian and Ukrainian officials have confirmed a series of strikes over the course of the last week, hitting three groups of bridges that connect occupied Kherson to the Crimean Peninsula, occupied Crimea.

I'm gonna start east to west.

There are three bridges over the North Crimea Canal.

They are the Stavky, the Mrna, and the Armyansk Bridge.

These connect main and small roads across this canal, uh, a significantly important route between these two territories.

Mrna, the most northern, Stavky in the middle, and the Armyansk further south.

Armyansk the most, the largest and most significant of those.

Those were hit on the night of June 10th.

Earlier in the week, around the 7th, the 8th, and the 9th of June, the Chonhar Bridge.

This is what...

Uh, this goes over sort of flooded marshlands, uh, estuarine marshlands, where, uh, the Black Sea comes into the top of the Crimean Peninsula.

That was hit.

This confirmed by, by Vladimir Saldo, the governor of occupied Crimea.

And then on June 10th, the easternmost bridge, the Henichesk, uh, was hit.

Now, that connects Kherson to a very thin spit that runs down the northeastern flank of Crimea.

Combined, this is really significant with some of those strikes actually hit Russian, uh, military convoys whilst they've been on the bridges, but it's holding those routes at risk.

And those routes have become increasingly important to Russia because of the ongoing campaign that we've talked about choking the roads on the land bridge.

That's the strip of occupied Ukraine that runs from Mariupol in the east through to Berdyansk.

And Russian forces have been using that to supply their forces in places like Orihiv and further west in Kherson, on the southern edge of the Dnipro River.

As a result of those earlier strikes hitting the land bridge, making that a dangerous route, Russian forces have diverted supplies.

They've tried to reach those troops by sending up weapons, men, materiel, and fuel from the Crym- Crimean Peninsula into Kherson.

And now those routes are at risk as well.

What does that mean for Russia? Well, reports this week that their troops are withdrawing from the Kinburn Spit.

Kinburn is on the southern edge of the Dnipro River, where it flows into the Black Sea.