Russia hits Kyiv's Northern Bridge, and the city restricts five of its six road crossings

A Russian strike hit Kyiv's Pivnichnyi Bridge on Saturday morning, the second major Dnipro crossing in the capital to be attacked in three days. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said two people were injured, the road surface and the overhead trolleybus wires were damaged, and traffic from the left bank to the right bank was blocked. Emergency services were on the way, he wrote on Telegram.

The southern bridge, the Pivdennyi, was hit by three drones on Thursday and twice on Friday. The New York Times, reporting from Kyiv, counted six attacks on bridges in the capital across those three days. Before Thursday, the two road bridges that tie the western and eastern halves of the city had not been struck in the war. They still stand. The damage and the threat of another hit have led the city to restrict or stop traffic on five of its six road bridges.

Russia said its drones had struck bridges used to move Ukrainian troops and military cargo, and again told foreign citizens, including diplomats, to leave Kyiv. Klitschko's public line has been blunter than a traffic notice. On Friday he wrote that the enemy was destroying Kyiv, and that it was no longer possible to pretend the city could live as it had in peacetime. The BBC quoted him warning that the city was being torn apart.

The practical effect so far is interruption, not collapse. The first hit on the southern bridge came on Thursday while a metro train was crossing. No one on that train was reported injured, but service across the bridge was suspended. On Friday evening people crossing on foot watched another drone strike the same bridge. On Saturday the northern bridge was shut in one direction. Three other bridges have had traffic limited. A concrete span of this size does not fall from a single drone. It has to be hit repeatedly, and even then the deck can stay up while the road, the power lines and the rail become unusable.

That is the point for a city split by a river. The left bank and the right bank are one labour market only while the crossings work. Close the metro on the southern bridge and the trip becomes a bus or a walk. Close the northern bridge to cars in one direction and the morning queue moves to the remaining open deck. Five of six road bridges under some form of restriction means the capital is being divided by order and by damage at the same time. Shops and cafes on both banks can stay open and still lose the customers who cannot cross.

The bridge attacks sit inside a wider week of strikes on the capital's infrastructure. Moscow has framed the bridges as military routes. The people on the trolleybus wires and on the metro train were not troops. Klitschko's count of injured on Saturday was two. The larger number is the commuters who now have to plan a crossing that may be closed by the time they reach it.

Bloomberg reported that Moldova separately logged Russian attack drones crossing its airspace before exploding, a reminder that the same night's tracks are not staying inside Ukraine. For Kyiv the next fact that matters is simpler. If the northern bridge reopens both ways, Saturday was a warning shot at the deck. If it stays one-way, and the southern metro stays stopped, the city is already living with a cut river.