RT-Engels: 07-10-2024,
Russia’s top spy says the West is committed to enabling Kiev to conduct “penetrating strikes on Crimea”
The head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Agency (SVR), Sergey Naryshkin, has claimed that the Crimean Bridge remains a high priority for Ukraine in its attacks on the peninsula using Western weapons.
Speaking at a meeting of the heads of CIS security agencies in Astana, Kazakhstan, Naryshkin noted that the bridge, which connects the peninsula to the Russian mainland and has repeatedly come under Ukrainian attack, is likely to be targeted by British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles.
He also pointed out that Ukraine has been using other Western supplied weapon systems to attack the peninsula, such as when Kiev’s troops used American-made ATACMS missiles in June, killing four people, including two children, and injuring over 150 at a beach in Sevastopol.
Naryshkin went on to recall that CIA Director William Burns had previously told the US Senate Intelligence Committee that Washington’s military aid to Ukraine is meant to enable Kiev to “inflict tangible damage on Russia,” which includes “penetrating strikes on Crimea.”
“Burns thus voiced the old Anglo-Saxon maxim – to cut off Russia’s access to the ‘warm sea’ at all costs,” Naryshkin said.
The Crimean Bridge was built between 2016 and 2018 after the peninsula had officially become a part of Russia in 2014. It was the only road and rail link between Crimea and mainland Russia until Moscow opened a vast land bridge to Crimea after Kherson and Zaporozhye regions and the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk voted to officially join Russia in the fall of 2022.