Russia strikes bridge support and falsely claims it was Ukrainian troops in barge

The Russian Ministry of Defence released footage on showing a strike on a remnant of a World War II-era bridge support in Ukraine’s Dnieper River, but falsely claimed it was a barge transporting Ukrainian troops. The Kremlin described the video as showing marine units of Ukraine’s armed forces approaching a landing area near the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and being struck by guided missiles fired from two Russian Ka-52 helicopters. While the strike was carried out in that area, the target depicted was identified previously in Ukrainian articles as a concrete support for a pontoon bridge that was built by German forces in 1943 and largely destroyed in the early 1950s. After Russia reported the strike, Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior ministry, posted the Kremlin’s video alongside photos of the structure, identifying it as a bridge support built during the Second World War. The Russian footage also cuts between images of the pilots and shots of the helicopters flying over farmland. Storyful has not determined the locations of those scenes. Just before the strike, a front-facing camera depicts an aircraft flying east to west over the Dnieper River, facing the structure directly, with Kam’yanka-Dniprovs’ka to their left and Nikopol out of frame to the right. Though that aircraft is depicted over water, the video cuts back to shots of helicopter pilots flying over farmland. Due to that discrepancy, Storyful therefore cannot confirm whether the helicopters shown in the video were involved in the strike.