KYIV, July 20 - Ukrainian forces on Wednesday damaged a bridge that is key to supplying Russian troops in southern Ukraine, where Russia’s foreign minister said Moscow will consolidate its territorial gains.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told state-controlled RT television and the RIA Novosti news agency that Russia plans to retain control over broader areas beyond eastern Ukraine, including the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in the south, and will make more gains elsewhere, The Associated Press reported.

Lavrov’s remarks and the Ukrainian missile attack on the strategically important Kherson region bridge indicated the nearly five-month war could broaden after unfolding mostly in eastern Ukraine since April.

Russia’s top diplomat noted that when Russia and Ukraine in March discussed a possible deal to end the fighting, “Our readiness to accept the Ukrainian proposal was based on the geography of March 2022.”

“Now it’s a different geography,” Lavrov said, repeating Moscow’s claims that the United States and Britain were encouraging Ukraine to expand the hostilities.

With Western countries providing Ukraine with longer-range weapons, Lavrov said Russia’s “geographical tasks will be pushed even further from the current line because we cannot allow the part of Ukraine under control of Zelenskyy or whoever comes to succeed him, to have weapons that will pose a direct threat to our territory and the territories of those republics that have declared their independence.”

Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 and quickly seized territory, but withdrew from the capital region and north to concentrate on seizing Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, which pro-Moscow separatists have partly controlled since 2014.

As Russian forces captured more of the two provinces, which together make up Ukraine’s industrial Donbas region, Ukrainian officials planned a counter-offensive to retake Russian-occupied areas in the south.

The Ukrainian strike on the Dnipro River bridge, the second in as many days, appeared intended to loosen Russia’s grip on the southern Kherson region.

Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of a temporary, Russian-installed administration running the region, said the Ukrainian military struck the Antonivskyi Bridge using U.S.-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launchers. The 1.4-kilometer (0.9-mile) bridge is the main river crossing in the Kherson region, and the Russian military uses it to supply its forces. Stremousov said that because of the bridge damage, pontoons would be constructed over the river, also known as the Dnieper.

The head of the Moscow-appointed Kherson administration, Vladimir Saldo, said cars could continue driving across the bridge but trucks couldn’t and instead could use a dam 80 kilometers (50 miles) away.

Early in the war, Russian troops overran the Kherson region just north of the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014. They have faced Ukrainian counterattacks, but have largely held their ground. (ap/ez)