KYIV — A Russian strike hit Kyiv’s Northern Bridge on Saturday, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said, a day after attacks damaged the Southern Bridge. Traffic on the Northern Bridge was stopped after the roadway and trolleybus cables were hit. Klitschko said two people were wounded, one of them briefly hospitalized.
France 24, citing AFP, reported that Russian attacks across Ukraine killed at least six people Saturday and that two days of strikes had fully or partly closed three of the capital’s six road bridges over the Dnipro. Russia’s Defense Ministry said it carried out the latest strike and claimed the bridge is used to move troops and military cargo. The Foreign Ministry said Moscow would keep launching what it called mass retaliatory strikes on Kyiv and other cities, and it urged foreign nationals and diplomats to leave. A similar warning went out in May.
The war also crossed a border that is not Ukraine’s. Moldovan President Maia Sandu said five Russian air-attack weapons, including Banderol missiles and drones, violated Moldovan airspace and exploded on Moldovan soil. Ukraine’s air force said Moscow launched those jet-powered munitions overnight toward the Odesa region, which shares a long border with Moldova. In Odesa, the sea ports authority said a sailor was killed and three people were wounded when a strike hit a civilian cargo ship flying the Liberian flag.
Elsewhere, regional officials said strikes on Kharkiv and nearby areas Friday and overnight killed five people and wounded more than 40. Ukrainian drones killed two people in Russian-occupied Luhansk, according to the Kremlin-installed regional head, and a Ukrainian drone strike killed one person and wounded two in Russia’s Belgorod region. The front, roughly 780 miles long, has barely moved in recent months. There is still no public sign of a settlement more than four and a half years after the full-scale invasion.