Ukraine was behind the 17 July attack on the Crimean Bridge, sources have told both the BBC and CNN.

In the morning, at around 3 am, explosions saw two spans of the road portion of the Crimean Bridge destroyed, leaving it unusable.

Completed in 2018, it is the only bridge crossing the Kerch Strait between the peninsula and Russia’s mainland, and is a vital piece of civilian infrastructure, as well as a key logistics route that enables Russia to resupply troops on the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia fronts.

The strike, which killed two people, has shut down the road portion of the bridge indefinitely, while leaving the railway portion still operational. Moscow has called it an “act of terrorism.”

According to a BBC source in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the attack was a joint mission of the SBU and the Ukrainian Navy, carried out using surface drones. Surface drones, also known as unmanned surface vessels (USVs), are vessels that operate on the surface of the water without a crew. They have been used regularly by Kyiv to attack Russian ships in the Black Sea.

Later, CNN also reported that the attack was a joint operation between the SBU and the Navy, also citing a source speaking “on condition of anonymity because they had not received authorisation to speak on the record.”

Kyiv has not officially claimed responsibility, while the SBU has stated it would reveal details of the strike “after our victory.”

The anonymous sources quoted by both the BBC and CNN also coincide with the official version of the story published by Moscow. According to Russia’s National Anti-Terrorist Committee.

“At 3.05 am, two Ukrainian unmanned surface vehicles carried out an attack on the Crimean bridge. As a result of the terrorist act, the motorway component of the Crimean bridge was damaged. Two adults were killed and one child was injured,” the committee’s statement says.

The 17 July attack is the second time the bridge has been hit since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The first strike, in October 2022, saw the bridge partially closed for a short time after spans of the bridge collapsed into the water. Despite numerous Western and Ukrainian outlets reporting that Kyiv was behind the attack, there has still been no official claim of responsibility.