Russia’s military destroyed a bridge on Saturday in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region in an effort to prevent a potential Ukrainian offensive, according to reports by a Ukrainian partisan movement in the region.
The Kyiv-aligned Atesh resistance movement (atesh means “fire” in Crimean Tartar) has been operating in the Kherson region since Russia’s February 2022 invasion. It gathers and reports information on local Russian military operations for Ukrainian intelligence.
The Kherson province, just north of the Crimea peninsula that Russia annexed in early 2014, is on the front lines of the war. Many global leaders, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has been called a “dear friend” by Russian President Vladimir Putin, have demanded “the return of Crimea to Ukraine.”
The United States and many Western allies said the Crimea annexation was illegal, and Washington and much of Europe placed sanctions on Russia. But unlike in 2022, Western countries did not provide Ukraine with military aid to fight back in 2014.
On Saturday, the Atesh group wrote in Ukrainian on its Telegram channel, “On the morning of October 18, Russians destroyed a bridge over the Konka River in the Kherson region.” The reported bridge is in the city of Oleshky.
Newsweek could not independently verify the report and has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry by email for confirmation.
Atesh, whose X (formerly Twitter) biography says has a goal of destroying “the Russian army from the inside,” at times receives intelligence from individuals who work for Russia’s military.
On Saturday, the group reported that “an agent with the 61st Marine Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces reports that this may be due to a possible offensive by the Ukrainian Defense Forces in the Kherson sector.”
In a social media post, Atesh reiterated this idea, saying Russian forces blew up the bridge because they were “anticipating a UAF offensive.” However, it also noted that there could be other reasons for the destruction of the bridge.
Newsweek reached out by email to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense for comment on Saturday.
Houses are seen underwater in the flooded town of Oleshky, Ukraine, on June 10, 2023. The Kyiv-aligned Atesh resistance movement said Saturday that the Russian military destroyed a key nearby bridge in anticipation of a Ukrainian offensive.
AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka
The group’s Telegram post said that Russian soldiers in that brigade “have repeatedly received intelligence information about a possible offensive by Ukrainian forces. It is also reported that all units up to 15 kilometers deep have been put on full combat alert.”
The Kherson region is one of the four regions of mainland Ukraine that Russia has said it has annexed, along with Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia. During its 2022 counteroffensive, Ukraine pushed Russian forces back to the east bank of the Dnieper River and established pockets of control in settlements like Krynky, southwest of the city of Kakhovka.
