Ukraine hits Crimea rail bridge and power grid to isolate Russian-held peninsula

Kyiv,UPDATED: Jun 23, 2026 19:48 IST

Ukraine said on Tuesday that its forces had struck a railway bridge, a power plant and other infrastructure targets in Crimea, in what appears to be a wider effort to isolate the Russian-held peninsula. The reported attacks came as Kyiv steps up long-range drone strikes in the latest phase of the war.

The strikes added to pressure on Crimea, where Russian authorities have suspended petrol sales to civilians as Ukraine intensifies attacks on supply lines and the power grid during the summer tourist season. Crimea was seized by force and illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014, and recent Ukrainian strikes have underlined Kyiv's ability to hit targets deep behind Russian lines.

Ukrainian Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said last week that his forces were "isolating Crimea with drones". "It looks like in the nearest time, Crimea will become an island. This could lead to some very unexpected consequences for Russians," he said on a blogger's YouTube channel. Ukraine has also struck targets near the Kremlin in Moscow and in St Petersburg this month.

Ukraine's Defence Ministry said drones hit an oil storage depot at the Kerch thermal power plant in eastern Crimea, an electrical substation in the west, and a liquefied natural gas distribution station in Simferopol, the peninsula's second-largest city. Ukraine's Special Operations Forces also said their units, working with what they described as the resistance movement in Crimea, destroyed a rail bridge over the North Crimean Canal near the village of Rozdolne.

The military said the bridge was a key logistics route used to supply Russian forces in southern Ukraine. It said drones began hitting the structure late on Sunday into Monday, causing part of it to collapse. A second strike early on Tuesday targeted railway repair equipment deployed at the bridge and the remaining sections, it said on Telegram. The Ukrainian claims could not be independently verified.

Parts of Crimea were without power on Tuesday, the area's energy supplier said. However, it blamed the outages on "technical malfunctions" in local power grids and said electricity was expected to be restored within 24 hours.

On the front line in eastern Ukraine, where Russia's war of attrition has brought slow and costly advances since its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has deployed advanced drone technology to hold Russian forces down. Its medium-range drones have disrupted Russian supply lines, while long-range strikes have increasingly damaged Russian oil facilities that provide important revenue for the Kremlin's war effort. Ukraine's Defence Ministry said on Monday that its forces had hit more than 800,000 enemy targets with drones since the start of the year, and that 95 per cent of the drones used by the armed forces were made in Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials have also sharpened their public messaging on the war. Ukraine's UN Ambassador Andrii Melnyk said on Monday that Kyiv remained ready for direct talks with Russia to achieve a "just and lasting peace" based on the UN Charter, but warned that Ukraine's willingness to compromise was not open-ended. He said at a UN Security Council meeting that a ceasefire along the current front line would already be a major concession and urged Russia to withdraw from occupied Ukrainian territory. Referring to recent Ukrainian strikes, he added: "This is just the beginning."

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday that the Kremlin was ready to "ensure the security" of its ally Belarus, days after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy demanded that Belarus remove relay equipment which Kyiv said was helping Russian drone attacks. Zelenskyy has said the relay stations are used to transmit signals to Russian drones attacking Ukraine. Lavrov told Interfax that Kyiv was trying to drag Belarus into the conflict, even though Moscow used Belarusian territory to launch its invasion of Ukraine. Taken together, the developments pointed to an expanding contest over Crimea, supply lines and regional pressure points as the war continues.

With PTI Inputs

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