Russia Says It Thwarted Another Attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge

The Russian military said Saturday that it had thwarted another attack on a critical bridge linking the occupied Crimean Peninsula to Russia that Kyiv has vowed to keep attacking until it is unusable.

The Russian Ministry of Defense said that three Ukrainian “semi-submersible unmanned boats” targeting the Kerch Strait Bridge were destroyed in the Black Sea overnight. The first maritime drone was detected shortly before midnight and the other two launched about 10 minutes apart just after 2 a.m. local time, the ministry said in statements.

The claims could not be independently verified, and Ukraine’s military did not explicitly comment Saturday on whether its drones had targeted the bridge.

But Ukrainian officials have said that they consider the destruction of the vital 12-mile-long bridge a strategic priority, and Kyiv’s forces have repeatedly targeted it.