The key facts
- The Northern Bridge in Kyiv is completely closed in both directions; the timeline for restoring traffic is unknown
- The city's heating and water supply systems are disrupted, and the power supply situation remains extremely difficult
- The bridge had already been damaged in early October — at that time, the road surface and the trolleybus contact network were affected
The bridge is completely closed
The Northern Bridge in Kyiv has been damaged, and traffic across it has been completely closed in both directions. This was announced by the city's mayor, Vitali Klitschko. According to him, specialists are inspecting the crossing and assessing the extent of the destruction; when traffic will be restored is not yet known.
Life-support problems have been building up for several days
At the same time, Klitschko acknowledged that the situation with Kyiv's power supply remains extremely difficult: the city's heating and water supply systems are disrupted, and energy facilities in the Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions have been damaged.
What happened earlier
Problems with the city's infrastructure had been accumulating over the past few days. Back on November 6, Life.ru reportedthat after an energy facility in Zhytomyr was damaged, utility services began switching the pumping stations of Kyivvodokanal to generators, but it proved impossible to provide backup power to all the equipment.
The bridge had already been damaged in October
The Northern Bridge had already sustained damage in early October: back then, as Life.ru reported, the road surface was damaged along with the trolleybus overhead contact network, which led to a temporary restriction of traffic from the left bank of the Dnipro to the right bank. Thus, the current complete closure is an escalation of the previous situation: if a month ago we were talking about temporary restrictions, now traffic has been halted in both directions, and no restoration timeline has been given.
