Russia warned repairs to the Crimea bridge could take months on Friday after an explosion on the main supply link that sparked a spate of retaliatory missile attacks on Ukraine.
Nearly eight months after Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine began, Kiev’s emboldened military celebrated Defenders’ Day, while a UN envoy claimed Russia’s forces were using rape as a weapon.
The celebrations come after pro-Kremlin authorities in the southern Kherson region asked Moscow for help evacuating civilians amid an ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensive.
At the same time, Russian-backed forces in the east have announced they are closing in on Ukrainian-held Bakhmut in eastern Donetsk region.
Russian President Vladimir Putin last week called the Crimean Bridge blast an act of terrorism and in retaliation lashed out at Ukraine for two days, hitting power plants and causing power outages and disruptions to water supplies.
The Russian cabinet, in a decree signed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, ordered the company tasked with “designing and restoring destroyed elements of the Crimean Bridge’s transport and engineering infrastructure” to complete the work by July 1, 2023.
The date for the work to be completed gives an indication of the extent of the damage caused by an explosion at the bridge last Saturday, and Moscow officials have been cautious in assessing the lasting impact of the incident.
– Ukraine “will definitely win” –
However, they said hours after the blast – which was blamed on Ukrainian special forces – that both road and rail services had been restored.
The bridge is logistically crucial for Moscow – a vital transport link for transporting military equipment to Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine.
It’s also symbolic for Putin, who inaugurated the bridge in 2018, a few years after he annexed the peninsula from Ukraine amid a chorus of Western condemnation.
On Friday in Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pledged that Ukrainian forces would be victorious over Russian forces in events marking the first celebrations of the country’s Defender’s Day.
He also laid a wreath at a memorial to soldiers killed since 2014, when Kremlin-backed separatists wrested control of two eastern regions and appealed to Russia in February to intervene.
“The world is with us more than ever. It makes us stronger than ever in history,” he added, referring to unprecedented Western aid.
Ukrainian forces launched a counter-offensive in the south towards the end of the summer, pushing ever closer to the capital of the Kherson region, also known as Kherson.
On Friday, Moscow-based authorities in the region renewed a call for residents to temporarily leave the country, amid reports that Ukrainian forces have been gaining ground near Kherson.
– advance on Kherson –
“The bombings of the Kherson region are dangerous for civilians,” said Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the pro-Russian regional administration, urging residents to take a “rest and rest” trip elsewhere.
But in the east, pro-Russian forces said they were closing in on the industrial town of Bakhmut after reporting the capture of two villages on the outskirts of the city this week.
An official of the so-called Lugansk People’s Republic, a breakaway region in eastern Ukraine, said there were “active hostilities ongoing” within Bakhmut.
“Our forces are confidently marching and liberating this settlement,” official Andriy Marochko was quoted as saying by Russia’s state news agency TASS.
Also this week, UN envoy Pramila Patten told AFP in an interview that rapes and sexual assaults attributed to Moscow’s forces in Ukraine are part of a Russian “military strategy” and a “premeditated tactic to dehumanize victims.”
“When you hear women testifying about Russian soldiers equipped with Viagra, it’s clearly a military strategy,” the UN special envoy on sexual violence said Thursday. “It’s clearly a deliberate tactic to dehumanize the victims.”
