At approximately 3 am local time on July 17, 2023, the Crimean Bridge came under attack,
marking another important development in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In the past, we have discussed both the symbolic and strategic
importance of the bridge.
However, to summarize, it opened in 2018 spanning the Kerch Strait that otherwise made Crimea
a de facto island from Russia’s perspective.
Before the invasion, the bridge provided Russia’s only ground-based access to the area,
supplanting a ferry system that was insufficient for the peninsula’s needs.
The itself bridge is actually two separate bridges,
one for passenger vehicles and the other for trains.
To understand the relevance and consequences of the attack, it is best to turn back the
clock nine months.
On October 8, 2022, a truck full of explosives detonated here
as it drove across the bridge.
It was heading from the Russian side and thus caused a small span from that half to fall
into the water.
The bridge for road traffic going east was also damaged, and the explosion was timed
just right to ignite a fuel train on the rail bridge.
Despite its tactical success, Ukraine never took formal credit for the attack.
However, the country’s official Twitter account posted “sick burn” immediately
afterward and its post office released a set of stamps
to commemorate the event, apparently featuring Jack and Rose recreating
an iconic scene from the film Titanic at the edge of the broken
bridge.
In any case, the attack coincided with Ukraine’s Kherson’s counteroffensive.
Russia relied on the bridge for resupply to the area.
Ukraine’s strategy for the attack was to slow down those shipments
and grind away at the Russian troops stationed across the Dnipro River.
To that end, the plan worked perfectly.
The lines to get onto the bridge became enormous.
It is likely the lines were so long you could see them on a map,
frustrating drivers to the point that they getting out of their cars and walking around.
But at least officials were cognizant enough of the problem to provide the proper facilities.
Anyway, a month later, Ukraine would retake Kherson and force Russian troops to the opposite
side of the Dnipro River.
It is unclear exactly what the long-term effect on the bridge was due to conflicting reports.
Nevertheless, by December 5, the situation had stabilized enough that Putin took a trip
to the site to examine the repair work.
Fast forward back to July 2023, and Ukraine was in a similar set of circumstances.
We are in the middle of another Ukrainian offensive.
The main thrust of it appears to be at the hook in the Dnipro River,
which does not need to be getting supplies out of Crimea,
given the faster pathway coming through Rostov-on-Don.
However, there is another, smaller push to cross the river in Kherson,
and that is where Crimea becomes critical.
In some ways, Russia was in a more vulnerable position in July 2023 than in October 2022.
41 days earlier, the Kakhovka Dam was breached,
flooding the area downstream.
Though both sides blamed each other, the evidence points to an internal explosion
under the surface, which was an area under Russian control.
The strategy here was to increase the difficulty of
Ukraine crossing the Dnipro downstream and opening a front toward Crimea.
This would allow Russia to redeploy its soldiers from the area east
toward Zaporizhzhia, where Ukraine was basing most of its offensive.
However, there was a side effect.
The Kakhovka Dam provided the water level for
the start of the North Crimean Canal,
a waterway that runs all the way to the peninsula and provided the bulk of its potable water.
This was vital to Russian interests.
Ukraine dammed the Canal further downstream in 2014,
right after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
Crimean agriculture simply was not feasible without the water running.
Part of the reason Russia built the bridge was to relieve the logistical burdens created
by that.
And indeed, securing the waterway was one of Russia’s main tasks
in the opening days of the war along the Southern Front.
But no more dam meant that Crimea was going to have to revert back to the bridge for that
support.
In turn, a repeat of these kinds of delays is not just a problem for
the Russian military— it is a more general problem for the peninsula.
It is also part of a broader attack on Crimean infrastructure.[]->
On June 22, 2023, Ukraine again targeted a Russian-held bridge, this time damaging the
crossing over Chonhar Strait.
Although on a map it appears that the Crimean peninsula is broadly attached to the Ukrainian
mainland,
in practice it is mostly a swampy mess.
That means that there are relatively few ways in and out of the peninsula going either way.
Thus, with the attack over near Kerch, Russia is facing logistical issues everywhere in
Crimea.
There is another key difference between the earlier and more recent attack on the Crimean
Bridge, though.
This time around, Ukraine appears to have used naval drones, although they have not
admitted responsibility, which cruised along the surface before
detonating under the bridge.
Following the October 2022 attack, Russia had to step up vehicle inspections
to prevent another truck bomb from crossing.
That contributed to the slowdown of vehicles.
This time, the countermeasures that Russia will need to impose will not have as much
of an effect on traffic.
If the new vulnerability has been found to be in the water, then the solution is to step
up naval patrols.
This does raise the question of how the drones got there in the first place, as Russia was
supposed to already be controlling the Black Sea
and also has territorial control all along the Sea of Azov’s coastline.
Regardless, the increased patrols will not have that much of an effect on Russia’s
broader war effort
because Ukraine has had virtually no navy since the 2014 annexation of Crimea,
and thus Russian naval assets are not a binding constraint at the moment.
After all, as alluded to a minute ago, the navy is already supposed to be patrolling
the Black Sea.
Perhaps coincidentally, the Black Sea Grain Initiative was set to expire on the same day.
Sponsored by Turkey, the agreement allowed Ukrainian grain exports
to traverse the Black Sea to make deliveries.
In exchange, Russian grain exports could evade the level of sanctions imposed on the rest
of its economy.
This is critical because, prior to the war, Russia was the world’s largest exporter
of grain at 37 million tonnes annually, while Ukraine ranked fifth at 18 million tonnes.
The bulk of that wheat went to the Middle East and North Africa.
If the initiative ends, then the likelihood of political instability in those countries
will go up.
The Kremlin’s press secretary announced that Russia would end the deal in the aftermath
of bridge attack.
But it appeared that Russia was already going in that direction anyway.
As such, it is unclear what if any effect the bridge had or will have on that.
As a final thought, Russia faces a strategic problem regarding further bridge attacks.
Although naval patrols will make replicating an attack along same vector difficult,
all Ukraine really needs is to close some distance.
Recall that in May 2023, the United Kingdom announced that it was transferring storm shadow
missiles to Ukraine.
The export version of the weapon has a range of 250 kilometers.
That places its range very close to the Crimean Bridge given the current line of control.
Thus, Russia faces a snowballing problem.
If this attack allows Ukraine to make advances along the land bridge,
then Ukraine can begin firing artillery at the metallic bridge,
which then causes further logistical problems for Russia,
which then means further Ukrainian advances, which then allows for further artillery opportunities,
which then causes further logistical problems, which then means further Ukrainian advances.
You get the idea.
But before anyone says goodbye to Russian Crimea, there are a couple of important limitations
to this.
First, the bridge is a massive structure.
Storm Shadow missiles are not going to cause the entire thing to collapse.
But that has not been the objective for Ukrainian artillery at other bridge sites.
The point is to just cause enough damage to the roadway to make some sections of a bridge
unusable, at which point the effect is similar.
The problem there is that Ukraine’s supply of Storm Shadow missiles is finite.
The system is expensive, so Ukraine will have to think carefully about how to best use them.
Do you know what isn’t expensive?
My book on the causes of Russia’s invasion.
Check the video description for more information on that.
And if you enjoyed this video, please like, share, and subscribe, and I will see you next
time.
Take care.
Okay, this is kind of crazy.
I did not notice the facilities on the side of the road until the middle of recording,
at which point I stopped what I was doing and added the note about it.
But did you notice what appeared later in the video?
I swear this was unintentional, but it popped up again as Putin toured the bridge.
The only conclusion to draw here is that when in war, invest in sanitation companies?