Things are not going well in the special military operation.
WaPo (“Explosion hits Crimean Bridge, damaging Russian supply route to Ukraine“):
A giant explosion ripped across the Crimean Bridge, a strategic link between mainland Russia and Crimea, in what appeared to be a stunning blow early Saturday morning to a symbol of President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions to control Ukraine.
The damage to the bridge, which provided a road and rail connection from Russia to the Ukrainian peninsula the Kremlin illegally annexed in 2014, marks another serious setback to Russia’s war effort in Ukraine by disrupting a crucial supply route.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged the government had no timeline for repairing the 12-mile bridge.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, a top law enforcement body, said a truck explosion had ignited fuel tankers as a freight train crossed the bridge. The cause of the truck blast was not immediately clear. After the explosion, thick plumes of smoke and flames could be seen from a distance.
Putin personally opened the $4 billion bridge, also known as the Kerch Bridge because it spans the Kerch Strait between the Black and Azov seas, in 2018 — a move intended to symbolize Russia’s ownership of Crimea.
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The blast was celebrated in Kyiv, where government officials hailed the incident and posted images on social media of collapsed concrete spans of the bridge and footage of the apparent moment of the blast, showing vehicles driving across the bridge just seconds before a giant fireball consumed the area.
Mykhailo Podoloyak, a senior adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky called it “the beginning.” “Everything illegal must be destroyed,” Podolyak added on Twitter. The Ukrainian government provided no immediate official statement on the cause of the blast. But in a taunt, the government’s official Twitter account posted: “sick burn.”
A Ukrainian government official told The on Saturday that Ukrainian special services were behind the bridge attack. The Ukrainska Pravda news site first reported the government’s role, citing an unidentified law enforcement official who said Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, was involved.
Ukraine previously has mounted daring attacks deep into Russian-held territory, including on an air base in Crimea, and on military targets across the border in Russia’s Belgorod region. But if the bridge explosion is confirmed as intentionally planned, it would mark the most stunning strike yet by Ukraine, which has been under invasion since late February by Russia’s far larger and better equipped military.
[…]
Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, tweeted a picture of the damaged bridge and said: “@Crimea, long time no see” along with a heart emoji. And the head of Ukraine’s postal service, said the agency would issue a new stamp showing a damaged bridge reading: “Crimean Bridge — Done.”
Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry, addressed the spate of memes and mocking social media posts from Ukraine. “The Kyiv regime’s reaction to the destruction of civilian infrastructure demonstrates its terrorist nature,” Zakharova posted on Telegram. Throughout the war, Russia has repeatedly bombed Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, including railroad stations, residential housing blocks, hospitals, schools, and theaters.
WaPo (“Kremlin, shifting blame for war failures, axes military commanders“):
Russian Ground Forces Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, who over a 44-year military career was best-known for scorched-earth tactics in campaigns he led in Syria and Chechnya, was named overall operational commander of the war in Ukraine in April. He lasted about seven weeks before being dismissed as part of what appeared to be a wider shake-up in response to heavy losses and strategic failures.
Around the same time, Col. Gen. Andrey Serdyukov, another four-decade serviceman, the commander in chief of the elite airborne troops, was stripped of his post after nearly all divisions of the airborne forces suffered major losses.
And just last week Col. Gen. Alexander Zhuravlev, the head of the Western Military District responsible for Kharkiv, where Russian forces lost huge swaths of territory in early September, was removed after four years on the job, according to Russian business daily RBC.
