Attack on vital Dnipro span compounds traffic chaos after repeated hits on Southern Bridge, as Moscow intensifies campaign against capital’s infrastructure.
A Russian air attack struck Kyiv’s Northern Bridge early on Saturday, damaging the roadway and overhead trolleybus cables and forcing the suspension of traffic across one of the Ukrainian capital’s main arteries spanning the Dnipro River.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported that emergency services were immediately dispatched to the scene after the strike, which hit the bridge during a morning air-raid alert. “Hitting the North Bridge. Emergency services are on their way,” he wrote on Telegram. “Traffic on the bridge from the left to the right bank is currently blocked.”
Russian Strike Disrupts Kyiv Bridge Traffic:
The impact damaged the asphalt surface and severed the electrical contact wires used by municipal trolleybuses. No casualties were reported. City transport authorities confirmed delays on multiple bus routes (including 21, 73, 101 and 114) and trolleybus lines (29, 30, 31 and 47). Some services were redirected via the Podilskyi Bridge toward Poshtova Ploshcha metro station and European Square in an effort to maintain limited connectivity between the city’s eastern and western districts.
The Northern Bridge, also known as the Pivnichnyi Bridge, forms part of Kyiv’s minor ring road and links the densely populated left-bank districts of Troieshchyna, Voskresenka and Raiduzhnyi with the right-bank neighbourhood of Obolon. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, more than a third of the capital’s roughly three million residents lived on the eastern bank, while the majority of workplaces, government institutions and commercial centres are concentrated on the western side. Hundreds of thousands of people cross the Dnipro daily.
Saturday’s strike marks an escalation in Russia’s recent focus on Kyiv’s river crossings. The Southern Bridge (Pivdennyi) has been targeted repeatedly by jet-powered drones since Thursday, forcing the complete suspension of both road and metro traffic across that span and contributing to severe congestion throughout the city. Klitschko has described the cumulative effect of these attacks as “tearing Kyiv apart,” warning that the capital faces a “very dramatic situation” as critical infrastructure, logistics and housing come under sustained pressure.
Kyiv Faces Growing Disruption From Russian Strikes:
Ukrainian officials and analysts say the strikes appear designed less to destroy the bridges outright-which would require far larger warheads-than to disrupt daily life, interrupt logistics and exert psychological pressure on the population. The use of relatively cheap, fast-moving jet-powered drones has complicated air-defence efforts, allowing repeated hits on the same targets over consecutive days.
The broader campaign against Kyiv’s infrastructure comes amid intensified Russian long-range attacks across Ukraine. Moscow has framed its actions as responses to Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy facilities, while Kyiv maintains that Russia initiated the targeting of civilian and dual-use infrastructure. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russian leadership of lifting previous restraints on strikes against civilian sites in an effort to force political concessions.
For ordinary residents, the practical consequences are immediate. Commuters face lengthened journeys, detours and uncertainty as alternative crossings become overloaded. Public transport networks struggle to absorb the redirected volume, and the psychological toll of repeated alerts and explosions continues to weigh on a city that has endured more than four and a half years of full-scale war.
As emergency crews assess the full extent of damage to the Northern Bridge and engineers determine how quickly repairs can restore traffic, the attack underscores a shift in Russian strategy: systematically targeting the connective tissue of Ukraine’s capital to make normal life increasingly difficult.