Ukraine thanks Russian woman for accidentally helping Crimean bridge strike

A Russian woman who filmed the Kerch Strait Bridge while holidaying on a yacht nearby gave Ukrainian military officials the necessary information to attack the crucial infrastructure in the summer, authorities said.

The strategic Crimean bridge, which links Russian-occupied peninsula to Russia, was struck at least twice during the war, once in October 2022—when the bridge partially collapsed—and most recently in July. Moscow, who said the attack killed two people, blamed Kyiv for both the strikes. Newsweek contacted Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense for comment by email on Saturday.

Ukrainska Pravda, a Ukrainian online newspaper, published a statement from a counterintelligence officer on Friday, saying that the country’s security services used the footage found on social media to prepare attacks on the Crimean bridge in July.

“During our preparations for the operation, most of the information we obtained came from open sources,” the officer said, according to the newspaper.

“One of the sources of such information was a video recording made by a Russian woman who was relaxing on a yacht near the Crimean Bridge—she filmed the internal structures of the bridge’s arch. This information gave us an idea of the point where the bridge had to be attacked to cause maximum damage,” the officer added.

Another counterintelligence officer mentioned by Ukrainska Pravda said that “every Russian with a smartphone” is Ukraine’s secret services’ “best friend, comrade and client.”

The same officer, who is referred to by the single name of Khrom, added: “We can observe a lot of sites inside Russia itself and in the occupied territories. We hope they’ll keep on filming, photographing and sharing.”

The 12-mile bridge, which rises over the Kerch Strait, is the longest in Europe and is of military, logistical and psychological value for Russia. The four-lane road bridge opened to much fanfare from Moscow in 2018, four years after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula, and the rail one was completed in 2019.

In a video broadcast released on Friday, Vasyl Maliuk, head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), said that the attack on the Crimean bridge in July had overturned Russia’s naval operations. Maliuk added that it had forced Moscow to use ferries to move weaponry and other military supplies.

“We have destroyed the myth of Russian invincibility. The country is a fake. The bridge is doomed. Plenty of surprises lie ahead and not just the Crimean bridge,” Maliuk said in a series of televised documentaries titled “SBU, the Special Operations of Victory.”

The documentaries contained footage of the Ukrainian attacks on the bridge, which were remotely controlled by technicians in a control room in Kyiv.

On Saturday, Moscow launched yet another strike on Kyiv, damaging buildings across the city and injuring five people, including an 11-year-old girl, according to Ukrainian officials. Russia’s renewed Ukraine-wide aerial onslaught comes as Kyiv presses on with its grinding counteroffensive, which was launched in early June to recapture Russian-occupied territory.