World
Moment Ukraine destroys Russian bridges in Kursk with US-made weapons
Dramatic video has captured Ukraine blowing up one of Russia’s pontoon bridges to handicap Moscow’s response to the incursion in Kursk, where Kyiv seeks to keep its foothold.
The Ukrainian military released the footage Wednesday of the pontoon bridge along the Seym River, in Kursk, being blown to bits by a hail of bombs.
“Where do Russian pontoon bridges ‘disappear’ in the Kursk region? … Operators, together with units of the Defense Forces of Ukraine, are accurately destroying them,” Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces touted in a post on Telegram.
The video goes on to show several other heavy bombardments along shorelines in the area, including strikes against a Russian munitions warehouse and electronic warfare complex.
While the location of other strikes could not be independently verified, the Kremlin has said at least three bridges in Kursk have been decimated by Kyiv in less than a week.
The destruction of the bridges greatly hinders Moscow’s supply lines and ability to deploy its troops to fight off the advancing Ukrainian army.
It also hinders civilian evacuations in the area as more than 120,000 Russians have already fled from Kursk after Kyiv troops took over dozens of towns in the region.
Moscow has also accused Ukraine of conducting the bridge attacks with US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), with Kyiv acknowledging for the first time Wednesday that it was in fact using the American weapons inside Russia.
President Biden had previously greenlit HIMARS to be used against Russia when defending Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, which saw some of the most intense fighting of the war in June.
The US and other allies have previously barred Ukraine from conducting long-range missile strikes with their weapons inside Russia.
Washington has yet to respond to the use of HIMARS so deep inside Russia as part of Kyiv’s incursion, by which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hopes to establish a “buffer zone.”
With Post wires