Yesterday's piece ended with open questions: would the bridge strikes continue, and would any embassy move. Sunday answered the first and added three things that weren't in the picture on Saturday. Everything below is from reporting I read on 4 October; I note where I'm relying on a single outlet.
What happened
- Northern Bridge, second hit. Kyiv Post, quoting Mayor Klitschko, says a Russian strike hit the Northern Bridge again on Sunday 4 Oct, leaving a crater in the road deck, a day after Saturday's jet-drone hit that injured two people and cut trolleybus wires. Euromaidan Press adds that it damaged a heating main, cutting hot water in the left-bank Desnianskyi district, and that trolleybus and bus routes now stop at Darnytsia Square.
- Scale. The Ynet/news-agency report says three of the six vehicle bridges over the Dnipro are now partly or fully closed and calls these Russia's first significant attacks on a major Kyiv bridge since February 2022. I have not verified the "first since 2022" claim independently. Ynet and Kyiv Post also differ slightly on when the campaign began (Thursday vs. Friday for the Southern Bridge hits); Ukrainian local reporting dates the first Southern Bridge hits to 1 October.
New since yesterday
1. Russia has now said, on the record, what it's doing. On Saturday Russia's Foreign Ministry urged foreign nationals and diplomats to leave Kyiv and said the military "will continue to carry out large-scale retaliatory strikes," framed as a response to Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure. Anadolu notes the ministry issued similar warnings in May, so "again" is accurate. It also says the strikes target "military facilities"; both sides deny deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure, per the same report. That matters for my earlier open question about whether the bridges fit the leaked winter plan: the ministry's own stated rationale is retaliation for the refinery campaign, not the plan's energy logic. A rationale is a claim, not evidence of intent.
2. The EU answered the embassy question, sort of. Commission spokesperson Christian Wigand said the EU delegation in Kyiv continues to operate unchanged. That is about the EU delegation only, not member-state embassies, and it doesn't touch the Guardian's report of contingency planning. Ukraine's foreign ministry said Friday no mission had given notice of relocating. So the question is still open, with one data point added.
3. Ukraine has started planning for losing a crossing. Restoration Minister Mykola Kalashnyk told Suspilne (in Ukrainian; my translation) that construction of reserve crossings, earth-fill dams with pontoon bridges, is to start next week. He said the work can take up to three months and should provide at least half the capacity of the existing bridges, which carry about 600,000 vehicles a day. A tunnel is being considered long-term but would cost tens of billions of hryvnias and needs foreign funding. Euromaidan's summary says the government is "weighing" these; the interview text says work has started and sites are chosen. His stated order of priorities is: stop the hits, harden the bridges, repair fast, and only then build alternatives.
The defence side
Zelensky told Reuters on Saturday that Ukraine is intercepting about 60% of the jet-powered drones mostly using F-16s and MiGs, whose 20 mm ammunition is running low, and that the first small, cheap anti-drone missiles are expected in the second half of October. On Sunday Chancellor Merz arrived unannounced in Kyiv and, per Der Spiegel via Kyiv Post, pledged 1,000 interceptors built for jet Shaheds. The figures come from Zelensky and German officials, not independent counts. Taken together, the timing is the story: pontoon crossings take up to three months and cheap interceptors arrive in weeks.
Still open
- Whether any bridge is structurally lost rather than closed; Kyiv Post says the city is still assessing the Northern Bridge deck.
- Whether any embassy relocates, and whether Russia follows its warning with strikes on the government quarter.
- Whether the interceptors and pontoon crossings arrive before the energy campaign's reported November peak.