Russian strike damages Kyiv’s Northern Bridge, blocks traffic toward right bank

Klitschko said the bridge was struck again Friday afternoon. Euronews reported that the Paton Bridge was open in only one direction on Friday, though no strike on that crossing had been reported. The restrictions affected routes across the Dnipro River, but they did not close every crossing.

Euronews reporters saw queues of stationary cars and buses. Some commuters walked in search of other routes. A seamstress told Euronews that her bus was stuck in traffic and that she had spent three hours trying to get to work.

The bridge disruptions are new since our Thursday report on power cuts in five Ukrainian regions. Grid operator Ukrenergo said repairs were underway where conditions permitted, but Euronews’ report on the outages did not specify how many consumers still lacked electricity or when service would return.

Repeated strikes on a river crossing

Kyiv lies on both banks of the Dnipro, and the Southern Bridge connects the city’s eastern and western sides. Its latest closure followed a brief reopening after an earlier safety assessment, according to Euronews’ account of the bridge damage.

Drones struck the bridge’s support structures Thursday. Authorities temporarily closed it for a safety check, then reopened it. Another strike Thursday night damaged a pier, the road surface and a protective concrete barrier near the subway line, according to the mayor.

The bridge was shut again Friday, and Klitschko confirmed a further strike that afternoon. Euronews reported that jet-powered drones were involved in strikes on the Southern Bridge. The reports do not say what later structural inspections concluded or when vehicles might be allowed back on the crossing. They describe damage and closures, not a collapsed bridge.

On Friday, the Paton Bridge was open in one direction, Euronews reported. Separately, reporters described severe gridlock on city roads. Neither account establishes that all cross-river travel stopped or how many journeys were delayed.

Klitschko described a broader break with ordinary routines. “It's no longer possible to pretend that we can live now as we lived in peacetime,” the mayor said, Euronews reported. Euronews reported that the seamstress had spent three hours trying to get to work while her bus was stuck in a traffic jam.

One death reported at a residential building

The traffic disruption came alongside a reported strike on a 25-story residential building in southeast Kyiv. Klitschko said a strike hit the high-rise, killing one person and wounding at least two. Those are the mayor’s figures for that building, not a final casualty count for all Friday’s attacks.

The accounts establish a reported death and injuries in a place where people live, as well as delays for people trying to move through the city. They do not quantify how many residents missed work or other trips because of the bridge restrictions.

Kyiv has faced repeated aerial attacks in recent months, with air-raid alerts disrupting daily life. The latest reports leave residents without a timetable for lifting the Northern Bridge’s left-to-right traffic block or reopening the Southern Bridge to vehicles; Saturday’s report does not establish whether Friday’s Paton Bridge restriction continued.

What officials said about the strikes

Ukrainian officials attributed the strikes to Russia. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of authorizing large-scale attacks on civilian areas and called for stronger sanctions to impede Russian drone production. Euronews reported that the Kremlin rejected Zelenskyy’s accusation.

The reported bridge damage, closures and traffic queues show what residents were dealing with Friday. The reports do not independently establish the attackers’ intended targets.

Officials have described successive strikes and safety assessments, but the reports provide no timetable for restoring normal traffic on the Northern or Southern bridges. The results of any later structural inspection of the Southern Bridge also remain unclear, and Saturday’s report provides no findings from an inspection of the Northern Bridge.