Ukrainian Strike Disables Bridge Between Crimea and Russia

A Ukrainian strike disabled the only road bridge connecting Russia with the occupied Crimean Peninsula, hitting once again a major symbol of President Vladimir Putin’s rule and constricting Russian supplies to the front lines in southern Ukraine.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said it would likely take until mid-September to restore partial two-way cargo traffic on the bridge, and until November to fully rebuild the 12-mile-long structure.

According to Russia’s National Antiterrorism Committee, Kyiv used two naval drones against the bridge, hitting it at around 3 a.m. local time on Monday. Ukrainian media, citing government sources, also said that naval drones were involved.

Artem Degtyarenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service, told news agency Interfax Ukraine that all the details of how the attack had been organized would be made public after Ukraine’s victory. “Any illegal structures used to deliver Russian instruments of mass murder are necessarily short-lived,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s adviser.

Coming in the middle of Crimea’s tourism season, Monday’s strikes inflicted yet another blow to Putin’s prestige in addition to creating formidable logistical hurdles for the Russian war effort. Built at a cost of $4 billion after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the bridge has become a major symbol of Putin’s drive to wash away the humiliation he says had been inflicted on Russia by the Soviet Union’s collapse. Putin personally opened it in 2018.

Ukraine already damaged the bridge once, last October, just hours after Putin’s birthday. At the time, only one of the two road parts of the bridge collapsed, and alternating traffic on the second two-lane part resumed hours later.

Khusnullin, who inspected the site Monday and reported to Putin, said that the bridge’s pillars haven’t been damaged, but that one span will have to be completely replaced. A parallel span, he said, has been displaced by some 70-80 centimeters but still rests on a pillar. Repair crews are trying to fix it in place and will test it initially with vehicles up to three tons, the weight of a passenger car, and then up to five tons, the weight of an average ambulance, hoping to reopen the lane for limited use.

The separate rail bridge, which sustained serious damage in October, was only lightly damaged in Monday’s blasts, Khusnullin said. Rail services, which are more important for military supplies, have already resumed.

John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said he doubted the strike would have a major impact on Russia’s warfighting capacity, noting the Russians have many other ways to supply forces in the Crimean Peninsula.

Russia said two civilians died on the bridge. “This is yet another terrorist act of the Kyiv regime,” Putin said at the end of a videoconference with government officials on the consequences of the attack. “A Russian response will occur. The ministry of defense is preparing proposals accordingly.”

Putin responded to the October attack by ordering waves of strikes on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure that aimed to deprive Ukrainians of electricity, heating and water during the winter. Those barrages, while causing rolling blackouts, ultimately failed to destroy the country’s energy system while prompting the U.S. and allies to supply Ukraine with modern air defenses, such as Patriot and SAMP-T antimissile systems.

Ukraine, which launched an offensive in southern Ukraine last month, has made only limited progress so far as its forces face extensive minefields and fortifications, as well as Russian helicopter gunships. In recent weeks, Kyiv focused on destroying Russian weapons depots, command centers and logistics nodes, taking advantage of the Storm Shadow and Scalp cruise missiles supplied by the U.K. and France that greatly extended its range.

A Storm Shadow attack on the Chonhar Bridge last month severed for 10 days the main connection between Crimea and southern Ukraine, on the alternative road that has now become the main lifeline to Russia. The Chonhar Bridge reopened on July 3.

Ukraine successfully used such a strategy last fall, when strikes on bridges across the Dnipro river and other logistic nodes pushed Russian forces out of the occupied southern city of Kherson.

Monday’s attack occurred on the day when the deal between Russia, Turkey, the United Nations and Ukraine to allow the export of grain and other food from Ukrainian ports was set to expire. The agreement was struck in Istanbul a year ago, and periodically renewed since then. Russia said after the attack that it is withdrawing from the agreement, though negotiations continue and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he plans to speak to Putin about an extension. Ukraine exported more than 32 million tons of food since the agreement took effect last August.

Civilian air connections to Crimea ceased in February last year, as Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine. Alternative connections to Russia through the rutted roads of occupied parts of southern Ukraine’s Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions are complicated, and in some parts run relatively close to the front line.

With tens of thousands of tourists stranded in Crimea, the Russian government said that it will relax border checks and abolish the curfew along the alternative roads in occupied southern Ukraine.

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at [email protected]