The cracked bridge. SBU chief Vasyl Malyuk spoke in detail for the first time about how his team blew up the Crimean bridge twice
" Only the chosen ones saw these shots," says SBU head Vasyl Malyuk, showing a video dated July 17, 2023, on his phone screen. On it, a group of special service employees views images from a marine drone camera on a computer monitor. The device diligently maneuvers on the waves, sliding in the direction of a massive structure, which can be recognized as one of the sections of the so-called Crimean Bridge, built by the Russians across the Kerch Strait after the occupation of the peninsula. In the background, the voice of the Kid himself can be heard, addressing the drone operator: "Quiet, quiet." Waves crash over the hull of the unmanned ship as it inexorably approaches the abutment of the bridge. A moment - and the image from the camera fades, and the people present around the monitor jump up with joy.
Hiding the phone, Malyuk explains that the second attack on the bridge was recorded on the video, as a result of which part of the span of its car section collapsed. "It was an indescribable feeling. Many months of development and success - it is difficult to describe this in words," says the head of the SBU about his emotions.
The operation to re-blow up the Crimean Bridge in the SBU, at the initiative of the personnel, was symbolically named Sea Kid. By the way, the new generation of surface drones used by the SBU is also called the same.
Eight months before this special operation, Malyuk's team first targeted the bridge, which is a key segment of Russian military supplies to Crimea and the occupied south of Ukraine.
Impact #1 occurred on the overcast morning of October 8, 2022. At that moment, a large stream of cars was crossing the bridge. In this traffic, at 5:40 a.m., the camera of the Russian video surveillance system recorded a loaded truck moving at high speed towards Crimea. In a moment, the long gauge exploded, damaging two spans and setting fire to a railway train with tanks filled with fuel, which was moving in parallel. According to the Russian side, five people died from the impact, including the truck driver, and traffic on the bridge was completely stopped.
Not only the occupiers were watching that explosion - there was another camera, the video of which was watched in real time by Malyuk in his office in Kyiv. The head of the SBU does not reveal where it was stored, but assures that he watched the explosion in all its details.
The first operation on the Crimean bridge angered the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, for whom this crossing became a symbol of his own success. After the detonation, which occurred the day after the 70th anniversary of the Kremlin's host, the Russians launched a powerful missile attack on Kyiv and began methodically shelling Ukraine's energy infrastructure. In addition, the Russian Federation created a special commission to investigate the circumstances of the explosion, which included representatives of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the Ministry of Transport, the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Russian Guard. Subsequently, the Russian court sent eight suspects to the pre-trial detention center, but none of them have been proven guilty so far. According to the SBU's assessment, the Moscow " investigation" showed an extreme degree of unprofessionalism, because it announced the search for the head of the GUR, Kyril Budanov, who had nothing to do with the operation.
The repeated attack on the bridge made a depressing impression on the Kremlin, strengthening Moscow in the understanding that Ukraine is capable of destroying this illegally built large-scale structure. Although the Russian side has repeatedly declared that the bridge is invulnerable to any type of weapon and has created a special security system around it.
" The Kerch bridge has become a fictional grail for the Kremlin. Therefore, its destruction not only disrupted logistics, but also showed that Putin's regime is as fragile and unstable as the structure of the bridge, - believes Oleksandr Kovalenko, a military-political expert of the Infoprotiv group. "This special operation had military and political goals, and they were all incredibly successful."
" I personally and two of my trusted employees were engaged in the development and implementation of the special operation with the bridge," explains Vasyl Malyuk.
According to him, the Security Service of Ukraine had been harboring the idea of blowing up the Crimean Bridge since the spring of 2022. Various options were considered. They were thinking of transporting the explosives in freight cars. But the Russians forbade the transportation of any cargo, except for the military, over the railway part of the bridge. In the end, they settled on the option with a truck loaded with barrels of oil, in which explosives would be hidden.
But doubts about the effectiveness remained. "It was important that the camouflaged explosives could travel from point A to point B. At the same time, it was necessary to cross the Kerch bridge," Malyuk explains. The option with barrels did not guarantee such "inconspicuousness".
And then the head of the SBU invented a variant with explosives carefully wrapped in cellophane film. Such cargo - large rolls - looked completely civilian and should not have aroused suspicion.
The SBU calculated the thickness of the film layer, sufficient to hide from the customs scanners the metal cylinders-cores pumped with a mixture of hexane.
" Rolls" hit an entire container - their total weight in TNT equivalent corresponded to 21 tons, or 42 Russian " hypersonic" Kinzhal missiles.
The passage of cargo from Ukraine to the place of the explosion on the bridge was very difficult. But Vasyl Malyuk does not disclose the details of this risky route, referring to the fact that it is still necessary to comply with the requirements of the conspiracy.
However, the head of the SBU emphasizes that it was a thorny path. And the Ukrainian special service carried the cargo through it without the involvement of foreign partners. The capabilities of the SBU were used exclusively. That once again emphasizes the high level of the special operation, Malyuk notes.
The SBU had to take into account one more important point: there are special EWs at the posts near the Crimean bridge, whose task is to knock down the GPS coordinates of explosive devices set to a certain point. The team assembled by Malyuk created a technically complex system, thanks to which, in the early morning of October 8, 2022, the cargo of "film" still flew into the air approximately in the middle of the bridge.
" We went through the seven circles of hell, used so many people in the dark! The Russians " closed" 22 people - imprisoned them. All of them are charged with complicity in a terrorist act. Although in fact they were doing their usual everyday business. They were ordinary Russian smugglers," says Malyuk with a smile.
The Kremlin did not understand this issue for a long time . Already six days after the attack, five citizens of the Russian Federation, suspected of complicity, ended up in pre-trial detention centers. Later, their number increased.
Russian opposition journalist Olena Romanova, who lives in Germany and works for Novaya Gazeta. Europe wrote about one of them, Oleg Antipov, a logistician from St. Petersburg. One of the transport agreements for the transportation of 21 tons of "polyethylene film" went through him.
Antipov himself came to the FSB after the bridge explosion, told what he knew - he was released, and then detained and sent to a detention center. The St. Petersburg logistician is still warming up in the pre-trial detention center, becoming a living example of the common practice among Russian special services — to look for the easiest " investigation" option in difficult cases . "Security forces in the Russian Federation need to show their effectiveness. That's why they grab the first and best suspect and hang all the sins of the world on him," says Romanova.
