“God loves the Trinity, and the SBU always brings what is conceived to the end and never repeats itself,” SBU Chief Vasyl Malyuk said in a statement posted on social media.
“Previously, we struck the Crimean Bridge in 2022 and 2023. So today we continued this tradition underwater,” he added.
The SBU announced that the operation “lasted for several months, with agents mining the “supports of this illegal construction.”
Constructed after Russia’s illegal occupation of Crimea in 2014, the Crimean Bridge is a critical supply and transport route for Russian forces to the occupied Ukrainian territories.
“And today, without inflicting any civilian casualties, the first explosive was activated at 4:44 a.m.,” the SBU said.
Underwater supports of the bridge’s piers were severely damaged at the bottom as 1,100 kilograms of explosives in TNT equivalent were detonated, according to the statement.
The operation, which follows the SBU’s mass drone strike against Russia’s strategic aviation on June 1, was personally supervised by the agency’s chief, Vasyl Maliuk.
A claimed “agent of Ukrainian intelligence services” has been detained in Crimea, Russia’s Federal Security Service said later on June 3, accusing the detainee of producing a “powerful explosive.”
The bridge suffered significant damage during two previous Ukrainian attacks in October 2022 and July 2023, though neither managed to take the bridge out of commission.
The construction of the bridge, also known as the Kerch Bridge, holds a significant symbolic value for Russia. The $4 billion project was a political statement designed to affirm the Kremlin’s illegal 2014 annexation of Crimea, as the peninsula is not connected by land to Russia.
