Vladimir Putin ally threatens to blow up iconic London landmark after UK drones destroy key Russian bridge

Fintan Starkey
Tue, 07 Apr 2026 23:11:20 +0000

A key Vladimir Putin ally has threatened to blow up a London landmark in revenge for British-made drones destroying a Russian-controlled bridge.

Pro-Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Kornilov said Westminster Bridge should burn after it emerged Ukraine used UK Malloy T-150 heavy-lift drones to blow up a bridge in Kherson, an oblast in eastern Ukraine under Russia's thumb.

Mr Kornilov, who himself as a British affairs specialist, condemned what he described as open boasting about "participation in acts of sabotage on Russian territory."

"It's high time we started bragging: 'Russian missiles destroyed the key Westminster Bridge'.

"Of course, the Houthis or the Iranians will be the ones doing the hitting," he frothed.

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He also labelled the Ukrainian operation a "terrorist attack."

The strike against the Konka river crossing, a distributary of the Dnipro, took place in March 2025 - but details of the British drone involvement only emerged on Tuesday.

Ukraine's 426th Unmanned Systems Regiment, a unit renowned for pioneering drone warfare techniques, executed the mission using the heavy-lift aircraft across more than 30 sorties spanning 60 days.

Throughout the operation, the drones transported an extraordinary 1.5 tonnes of explosives whilst evading Russian detection and defences.

Dramatic footage captured the moment blasts tore through the critical structure, which had been enabling Russian forces to threaten the city of Kherson.

Ukrainian forces had previously attempted to demolish the crossing on multiple occasions, deploying conventional strikes and American-supplied HIMARS rocket systems without success.

The breakthrough came when commanders assigned the task to the specialist 426th Regiment.

Colonel Oleksii Bulakhov, who leads the unit, explained the tactical approach: "Bridges are relatively easy to destroy from underneath. But they are engineered in a way that makes them extremely robust from the outside."

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His team lowered a 50-kilogramme shaped charge by cable to target the structure's most vulnerable points beneath the deck.

A missile subsequently detonated the explosives, completing what has been described as one of the conflict's most significant operations.

Westminster Bridge, adjacent to the Houses of Parliament, has attracted Russian attention before.

The landmark's connection to Moscow's intelligence operations was illustrated when photographs emerged of Anna Chapman, the Russian spy later arrested by the FBI in New York, posing on the bridge before being stripped of her British citizenship.

Another Kremlin-aligned media outlet, Tsargrad, accused Britain of "literally gushing with delight about their direct involvement in the terrorist attack."

The publication questioned whether the time had come to redirect military strikes towards "the decision-making centre after such a candid admission."