SSU Head shares details of the Kerch Bridge bombing in October 2022

The Head of the Security Service of Ukraine, Vasyl Maliuk, has disclosed the details of the special operation to blow up the bridge across the Kerch Strait in October 2022. He said this in an interview with NV. According to Maliuk, the SSU has been harboring the idea of blowing up the bridge, which was illegally built by the invaders, since the spring of 2022.

For this, various options were considered. At first, there was an idea of transporting the explosives in freight cars, but the Russians forbade the transportation of any cargo, except military goods, over the railway part of the bridge. In the end, the SSU settled on the option with a truck loaded with barrels of oil, in which explosives would be hidden.

"It was important that the camouflaged explosives could get from point A to point B, and cross the Kerch Bridge," explains Maliuk. According to the head of the special service, in order to bring the metal cylinders filled with RDX, the total weight of which in TNT equivalent corresponded to 21 tons, to the bridge unnoticed, the SSU officers wrapped them in packing film.

Officially, the rolls of the latter were transported by the truck.

Containers for explosives. Photo credits: SSU

The Security Service calculated the thickness of the film layer needed to hide the explosives from customs scanners. The passage of cargo from Ukraine to the site of the explosion on the bridge was very difficult.

However, Vasyl Maliuk does not disclose the details of this risky route. The head of the SSU emphasizes that it was a thorny path and the Ukrainian special service carried the cargo through it without the involvement of foreign partners. They used only their own capabilities.

In addition, according to Maliuk, the SSU "bypassed" special jammers on the Kerch Bridge that disrupted GPS coordinates. The Security Service of Ukraine created a technically sophisticated system that allowed a cargo of "film" to fly into the air on the morning of October 8, 2022, approximately in the middle of the bridge across the Kerch Strait illegally built by Russians to connect the occupied Crimea and Russia.

The aftermath of the Crimean Bridge explosion, October 8, 2022

"We have gone through seven layers of hell, we have involved so many people! The Russians have imprisoned 22 people.

They are all charged with complicity in a terrorist act.

But in fact, they were engaged in their usual routine.

They were ordinary Russian smugglers," says Maliuk.