Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the President of Ukraine, commenting on the Saturday morning incident on the Kerch bridge in Crimea, says that this is only “the beginning”.

Massive damage to the Kerch BridgePhoto: shot from Twitter

“Crimea, the bridge, the beginning. Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled,” he wrote on Twitter.

Volodymyr Zelenskyi’s adviser does not directly say that the attack on the bridge was carried out by Ukrainians, but it is known that this is a long-standing goal of Kyiv, which has repeatedly emphasized that it is an illegal construction.

Since the summer, Ukraine has been declaring that the Kerch bridge is “target #1”

In mid-June, Ukraine hinted that it would attack a bridge built by Russia, and Ukrainian intelligence published a 300-page document detailing the technical details of the construction

The document was released a day after Ukrainian General Dmytro Martsenko said the bridge would become “the number one target” if Kyiv received the necessary weapons.

General Philip Breedlove, who was NATO’s supreme commander in Europe from 2013 to 2016, said the attack on the bridge was justified by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

“Several people I talked to said that destroying the Kerch bridge would be a huge blow to Russia. The Kerch bridge is a legitimate target,” Breedlove said in the summer.

Kremlin spokesman Dmytro Peskov said in June that all precautionary measures had been taken to ensure the security of Crimea. The Kremlin is aware of Kyiv’s latest threats to target the bridge, Peskov added.

Moscow threatened to bomb Kyiv in the event of an attack on this structure.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Ukrainian General Marchenko’s threat contradicts Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi’s promises to Western partners not to use long-range weapons to attack Russian territory.

In mid-August, the Russian senator from Crimea, Serhiy Tsekov, said that it is very likely that Ukraine will try to attack the Kerch bridge in order to “raise the morale of the army”, but the structure connecting Russia with the Crimean peninsula is very well protected and “it is practically impossible to influence”