(Corrects title to 'deputy defence minister' in final bullet point)
By Tom Balmforth
KYIV (Reuters) -Ukrainian missiles struck one of the few bridges linking the Crimea Peninsula with the Ukrainian mainland early on Thursday, cutting one of the main supply routes for Russian occupation forces in southern Ukraine as Kyiv pushes to drive them out.
Meanwhile on the eastern front Ukrainian forces were containing Russian forces and have not allowed "a single metre" of Russian advances, Ukraine's Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said on the Telegram app on Thursday.
She added Ukrainian forces on the southern front, where several villages were retaken last week, were "gradually moving forward. We have had partial success. We are pushing back the enemy and levelling the front line".
Ukraine is attacking Russian supply lines to disrupt Moscow's defence of occupied territory in the south, where Kyiv is in the early stages of its most ambitious counteroffensive of the war.
Kyiv says it has recaptured eight villages so far, but it has yet to commit the bulk of its forces to the fight and its troops have yet to reach the main Russian defensive lines.
Vladimir Saldo, the head of the Russian-installed administration in occupied parts of Ukraine's Kherson province, released video of himself on the Chonhar road bridge, where craters had been blasted through the asphalt.
"Another meaningless act perpetrated by the Kyiv regime on orders from London. It solves nothing as far as the special military operation is concerned," he said, vowing to repair the bridge and restore traffic.
The bridge is one of just a handful of access roads to Crimea, which is linked to the Ukrainian mainland by a narrow isthmus.
Alternative routes require hours-long detours over roads in poor condition. Russia's RIA new agency quoted Russian-installed transport officials as saying repairing it could take weeks.
The bridge is beyond range of the battlefield rockets Ukraine has used for a year, but within reach of newly deployed weapons such as British and French air-launched cruise missiles, allowing Kyiv to hit logistics routes Russia had deemed safe just weeks ago.
'PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT'
The strike was "a blow to the military logistics of the occupiers", said Yuriy Sobolevsky, a Ukrainian official on the governing body for the Kherson region.
"The psychological impact on the occupiers and the occupying power is even more important. There is no place on the territory of Kherson region where they can feel safe," he said.
Russian investigators said four missiles had been fired by Ukrainian forces at the bridge, the RIA news agency reported. It quoted a spokesman for military investigators as saying that markings found on the remains of one of the missiles suggested it had been made in France.
Ukraine's Maliar said fighting in the Lyman sector, in the north of Donetsk region, was "the most difficult".
In the south, Ukrainian forces continued their offensive aimed at moving towards the city of Melitopol in the Zaporizhzhia region and the port of Berdiansk on the Sea of Azov, she said.
Russia says it has fended off the Ukrainian counterattack and inflicted heavy casualties, which Ukraine denies.
Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin accused the leaders of the Russian military of lying to President Vladimir Putin and the Russian people about the extent of Russian losses and setbacks in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has acknowledged that progress has been slow so far, but says his troops are advancing cautiously into heavily mined and well-defended areas to minimise losses.
Zelenskiy on Thursday accused Russia of planning a terrorist attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, which is in Russian-held territory near the front line. Moscow denied any such plan.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called out Russia on Thursday for killing 136 children in Ukraine in 2022, adding its armed forces to a global list of offenders, according to a report to the U.N. Security Council seen by Reuters on children and armed conflict.
Russia has denied targeting civilians since it invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Peter Graff and Alexandra Hudson; Editing by Gareth Jones and Alex Richardson)
