Russian drone strikes disrupted three bridges across the Dnipro River in Kyiv on Friday, October 2, snarling travel between the Ukrainian capital’s eastern and western banks, according to Mayor Vitalii Klitschko and Ukrainian authorities. A separate strike on an apartment building in the city killed one person and injured two others, officials said. The attacks came as Russia intensified its aerial campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure ahead of winter.
The Southern Bridge, also known as the Pivdennyi Bridge, was closed to traffic after repeated strikes, while access to the Paton and Metro bridges was restricted, according to city authorities cited by Reuters and Al Jazeera. The Southern Bridge carries road vehicles and a metro line. The closures sent commuters toward other crossings and caused long traffic jams, Reuters witnesses and Associated Press reporters said.
Reuters reported that Russian drones had struck the Southern Bridge on Thursday and hit it again on Friday. The agency said traffic on the Southern and Paton bridges stopped temporarily on Friday morning, with another bridge partly restricted. The Associated Press reported that one of the affected bridges was hit again on Friday afternoon, citing Klitschko. Accounts of access changed through the day as officials assessed the damage.
The fatal apartment strike caused a fire on upper floors of a building in Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district, according to officials cited by Reuters and Deutsche Welle. Russia’s defence ministry said its drones had hit a bridge over the Dnipro and other facilities it described as military targets, including a power station near Kyiv and the port of Izmail. That was Moscow’s stated justification; the reported civilian death occurred at a separate residential site.
The river crossings are important commuter routes. City figures cited by Reuters show that, before the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, more than a third of Kyiv’s roughly three million residents lived on the eastern bank while only 18 percent of jobs were there. The disruption therefore affected travel toward workplaces concentrated on the western bank. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged allies to tighten sanctions on components used in Russian drones and missiles, Al Jazeera reported.
The strikes add to concern over Ukraine’s ability to protect transport and power infrastructure as colder weather approaches. Ukrainian officials are assessing damage and managing traffic across the river, while the status of individual crossings may change. The attacks occurred amid continuing fighting and diplomatic discussion of possible limited pauses in strikes on energy infrastructure, but no such arrangement has been announced.
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