November 8, 2022
In the final few days of February, as the Russian Army advanced toward Kyiv, Ukrainian forces blew up the Irpin bridge, ripping open its latticed metal insides so that their edges buckled and curled. A suburb of Kyiv, Irpin was the last city that the Russian Army would have had to conquer to reach the capital; the bridge provided the fastest route from the city center to the Kyiv ring road. “It was the main bridge that stopped the invasion of Kyiv,” says Slava Balbek, a Ukrainian architect who is volunteering as a drone operator with territorial defense forces. “It’s like if you cut your arm off so the rest of your body will be saved.”
READ THE FULL NYT ARTICLE:
New York Times