If a pirate ship throws a boarding plank onto the deck of an unwilling ship, the pirate captain should not be surprised if the victim kicks the plank away, trapping his boarding crew on the innocent boat.
The longest bridge in Europe has now become a concrete pedestrian crossing. BYOI (bring your own insurance).
Open-source intelligence agency Molfar says Russia has stopped transporting military equipment via the Crimean bridge. It is scrambling to make alternate cargo arrangements.
The bridge, which connected Crimea’s eastern extremity with Russia’s Krasnodar region, provided the only fixed link that was out-of-range of Ukrainian guns. But not, as it turned out, out of range of Ukrainian revenge. Now, people who want to leave Crimea quickly have to go via Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine where a new rail line is being build, adding 700 kilometers to their journey.
Satellite reconnaissance shows that Putin’s orcs are now building a railway supply line on the western coast hugging the Sea of Azov to plug Crimea into Russia.
Instead of driving 19 km (12 miles) over the bridge, Putin’s troops were forced to build a brand new 450-mile rail line built linking Russia's Rostov-on-Don to occupied cities like Melitopol. It is almost complete. Ukraine says it is a legitimate military target.
The Kerch Bridge was built as a trophy project by the Russians after they seized Crimea in 2018.
The bridge cost $3.6-billion. It was built by one of Putin’s friends (of course – keep the money in the family). 20 other companies were involved. The bridge and the contractors were immediately sanctioned by the EU. It was the longest bridge ever constructed by Russia.
It was supposed to have an impact on Russia's economy as a whole. Not so much, anymore.
The bridge was a great symbol for Putin. He told the workers that they had performed “a miracle”. He boasted to them that there had only been three times in 145 years that the rail route from St Petersburg to Sevastopol in Crimea had been broken: during the Russian revolution, during World War Two and in 2014.
And now, once more under Putin’s rule.
It makes you wonder what will happen to the bridge after Ukraine wins. It will certainly not be re-opened. Perhaps the Ukrainians can build condos on it.
Putin drove across the bridge at its formal opening.
The Ukrainian special services attacked the bridge twice: once with a truck bomb that detonated on the bridge, causing several spans to collapse, and again last year when sea drones exploded under the bridge, shearing off sections of the structure and possibly weakening the spans.
At the time the SBU Security Service of Ukraine wrote: “The bridge has gone to sleep again.” Another post called the bridge a “superfluous structure”. In February, Ukrainian naval commander Oleksii Neizhpapa said that the bridge's "days are over."
Russia had claimed the bridge was “comprehensively protected on the ground, from the air and from the water and under the water”.
More than 12.5 million tons of construction materials went into the project. 46 foundations were laid for the supports. More than 5,100 piles, 48,000t of harvested superstructures, and approximately 7,800t of steel shipping arches were shipped by June 2017.
It was fine in peace-time; in war, it was like one of those ‘bait animals’ that are tethered to attract the lion’s attack.
With all of that at stake – the labor, the materials, the planning – Putin went to war.
Now, functionally, the bridge does not exist. It’s as if he had put all that Russian materiel on the far side of the moon, for all the good it will do him.
Now, according to Molfar analysts, between February and mid-April there have been no Russian freight trains carrying military equipment on the Kerch Bridge.
Ukrainian military analyst Mykhaylo Prytula, a retired army colonel, said that Kyiv’s strategy is to isolate the peninsula as much as possible:
“At some point, Crimea will simply be an island without any connection to the mainland or via the Kerch bridge. Imagine a Crimea without water. Without military supplies…. All that will be working will be the airports and the ports. Car traffic will be closed, and people will not be able to evacuate their possessions.
“At that point, the only choice will be to surrender or to flee.”
Ukraine's Security Service chief Vasyl Malyuk said that rail traffic had been reduced to a handful of passenger trains. Putin is willing to risk people but not precious munitions.
According to the Molfar report, in November 2023 the Russians were constructing a railway from Akimivka to Berdyansk. This route extends to Mariupol and then on to Rostov. The railway is single-track and lacks electric traction, since electrical networks are vulnerable to shelling. Construction began near occupied Donetsk.
According to sevastopol.su, the first freight trains traveled along the new route In March 2024. The first stage of the project includes 63 km of new tracks and 140 km of restored tracks. Two more stages, which will include track junctions and the construction of station offices, are planned for completion by the end of 2024.
Eventually, the Russians launched the first train on this railway in the occupied part of Donetsk Oblast. According to Mariupol mayoral advisor Petro Andriushchenko, the first train departed from the port of Mariupol to the Volnovakha railway station. The Times journalists suggest that this new route is being prepared for a Russian offensive against Ukraine in 2024.
The Russians now also use highways, though truck traffic is not as efficient as rail. An alternative to new highways is the use of ferries, or aircraft – again, the volume diminishes.
In building the new rail lines, the Russians are benefitting from the lack of economic development in the past several decades. They still have extensive railway manufacturing facilities and an entire corps in the army devoted to the activity. The Russian logistics forces in fact have entire railway support brigades. They can lay railway and pipe within days of a position being secured. Within NATO, Italy is the only NATO country to field a full specialized Railway Brigade.
So right now, the Russians are stopped 20 km. from the border, two years into their temporary military activity.
And their replacement plan - Plan B - is not exactly secure, as the road and rail lines are within range of many Ukrainian deep strike assets.
If these are destroyed or damaged too desperately to repair - as it is faster to blow something up than to repair it - the Crimea becomes an island with two million Russians on it. Going through a lot of food every day.
All the Russians have done is create new opportunities for pinch-points along a 450-km route, instead of a 19-km target. This will make it even easier for Ukraine to attack. And more than 20 times harder for Russia to defend.
The Putin plan has slipped off the bridge.
I wonder if anyone in Russia is asking themselves: if our Leader is so great and prescient, why did he make us build a bridge that would be destroyed in a war?
Crimea, instead of being Putin’s great victory, will be the anchor that pulls him to the depths of defeat.
It will not be a lightning-fast collapse; rather a slow strangling. But when the final moments in Crimea come, it will be a panicked surrender.
Like a car skidding toward the edge of a cliff…horror and then a final scream.
And at that, Putin will fall. Just like his bridge.