Russia’s Defence Ministry reports intercepting missile in Crimea

In the early hours of 19 August, the Ukrainian army attempted to carry out a missile strike on Crimea using the S-200 missile system, the Russian Defence Ministry said on Saturday.

The ministry specified that “Russian air defence systems detected the Ukrainian missile in time and shot it down”. There were no casualties or damages reported. The Ukrainian military has not commented on the attack.

At the same time, the head of the Ukrainian Security Service Vasyl Maliuk spoke in detail about the October 2022 Crimean Bridge explosion in an interview with NV. “Two of my trusted employees and I personally developed and implemented the special bridge operation,” he said. He came up with the idea to wrap the explosives in cellophane so that the cargo wouldn’t look suspicious.

He emphasised the fact that Ukraine’s foreign partners did not take part in the Crimean Bridge explosion. Maliuk said that the Ukrainian Security Service had been able to bypass Russian electronic warfare systems, which allowed his team to blow up the cargo early morning on 8 October 2022 in the approximate middle of the bridge.

Maliuk noted that the Russians used to transport the explosives had been in the dark about their role.

At the end of July, Maliuk officially confirmed Ukraine’s involvement in the explosion for the first time. The Ukrainian Defence Ministry also confirmed Ukraine’s role in the bombing.

At the beginning of August, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council Oleksiy Danilov said that the Ukrainian secret services had been involved in both Crimean Bridge explosions.

The first explosion on the bridge took place on 8 October 2022, killing four. The second attack on the bridge occurred on 17 July 2023, killing a married couple and injuring their teenage daughter.