A defiant Ukrainian marine blew himself up along with a bridge in the Kherson region near Crimea in a heroic act that slowed down Russian troops.
The marine was named by the General Staff of the Armed Forces as Vitaly Shakun. He was manning the Henichesk bridge in the Kherson region when Russians advanced and mined it.
According to a post on the General Staff’s Facebook page, the battalion decided the only way to stop them was to blow up the bridge. Shakun had no time to escape. He told his comrades he was going to detonate, and second, later they heard an explosion.
His efforts and that of the Ukrainian armed forces are significantly slowing down the Russians – one senior defence official cited by CNN said Russian troops are meeting ‘more resistance’ than they anticipated.