An explosion that severely damaged parts of the road and rail bridge between annexed Crimea and the Russian mainland early Saturday seems designed to play into President Vladimir Putin’s current talent for making bad decisions.
An explosion that severely damaged parts of the road and rail bridge between annexed Crimea and the Russian mainland early Saturday seems designed to play into President Vladimir Putin’s current talent for making bad decisions.
It brings forward by a number of weeks the strategic choices he must make about Russia’s occupation of southern Ukraine. This entire presence was already poorly supplied, managed and in retreat. And it shows that the key railway route into Crimea and onwards to the frontlines in Kherson is highly vulnerable to future attacks.
While Kyiv has not claimed responsibility for the Kerch Strait bridge blast, it has previously taken credit for a series of strikes on targets in Russian-occupied Crimea over the summer.
Russian officials said a limited amount of car traffic had resumed on undamaged sections of the bridge’s roadways by Saturday evening and that train services were resuming on the bridge’s railways. But trucks were being asked to take ferries across the strait, state media reported.
Rickety ferry crossings in bad weather or highly dangerous air cargo flights may now be needed to bolster military shipments into Crimea and towards the frontlines, which will place more pressure on a single railway track further east coming through Melitopol along the Azov Sea coast.
It exposes the staggering 20th century weakness of Russia’s armed forces and occupation: They need railways to get around.
Ukraine has been targeting this system with slow, patient accuracy. First Izium, which led to the collapse around Kharkiv. Then Lyman, which is leading to the erosion of Russia’s control of Donetsk and Luhansk. And now the Kerch Bridge, which had become so vital to everything that Russia is trying to hold on to in the south.
