Kerch Bridge Blown Up Again – Warnings to Evacuate Crimea

Geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan says the bombing of the Kerch Strait Bridge is devastating for Russia. I don’t know if he’s right or exaggerating, but his analysis is worth consideration. In the last clip, Alexander Mercouris said it is inconsequential. Definitely check out his analysis.

The Kerch Railway Bridge was blown up again. Zeihan says it is “a single most important piece of logistics in the Ukraine war. It is the primary method that the Russians use to get equipment, and men, and ammo, and especially fuel into the front.”

This is his analysis in part:

“Specifically, over this bridge that crosses the Kerch Strait, which is a body of water separating the sea of Azov in eastern Ukraine from the Black Sea proper, the problem the Russians have, the reason they like the bridge so much, is if they try to send things through the mainland route going through the provinces…it’s within rocket and artillery range.

“And the Ukrainians have shown that their targeting, especially with intelligence provided by the Western allies, is sufficiently good to hit most trains in that area as they’re passing through. So that means they would have to go to convoys, and that takes significantly longer and they can’t move nearly as much gear or people and especially fuel.

“So they like to use the Kerch Strait bridge to get the stuff into Crimea and then take other methods of distribution through the northern part of the peninsula into the southern front.

The bridge was first blown up last autumn, and it was clearly Ukrainians who did it – maybe the Americans too. No one claimed responsibility. Russians repaired the road span but couldn’t bring the rail system back online.  So, you don’t have tanks or fuel tankers so they can send some ammo. They can send people and troops but no fuel, but not in the volume that they would like.

“There is really no alternative to the Kerch Strait bridge.

“Ukrainians have proven time and time again, with missiles and underwater drones, that they can attack maritime vessels they have become so problematic that the Russians are no longer even stationing their military vessels in the Crimean peninsula at all. They’ve pulled them all back to their port city on the northeast shore of the Black Sea.

“What this new attack did was again attack the vehicle spans but this time from below. They completely took out one of the vehicle spans again and severely damaged the second one which means the only way that the bridge can function now is that one remaining rail link that is operating at partial capacity. The light cargo one. … this is extraordinarily bad for the Russians.

“If the Russians prove unable to get this line repaired fairly quickly and who knows that’s a disaster for Russian forces. They’re already under extreme pressure from the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians have already hit a number of bridges and road and rail connections in and out of the northern part of Crimea which was already constraining the Russian logistics.

“Now they can’t bring anything fresh at all at scale so if the Russians can’t just get this back up online, all the 100-odd-thousand troops that they have in Crimea are going to be completely on their own. Also, in the aftermath of the destruction of the dam earlier this year, there will be no food grown at scale in the Crimean peninsula at all.” …

“Unless the Russians want to face the mother of all global embarrassments and have the entire Russian population of Crimea, which there’s over 2 million people plus 100-odd-thousand Russian troops become hostages of the Ukrainians, they need to start a mass evacuation as soon as possible.

“My guess is that this is not going to happen because the Russians have shown remarkably unable to carry information up to the top, so it’s entirely possible that Putin doesn’t know just how dire the situation is, and this, of course, assumes that there’s no additional attack to complicate repair efforts or just cause fresh damage to any parts of the system.

“And we’re at a point now where a medium-range missile could temporarily take out that one remaining rail connection and that’s all she wrote…

The bombing of the Kerch Bridge again is very serious. The Russians are blaming the American and the British government.

“I don’t want to say it wasn’t the Americans or it wasn’t the British, but I would suspect if it was the Americans, we would have not hit the road section. We would hit the rail section because that would have had a much more desired impact on the war effort by breaking the really strong rail connection that the Russians really need. Whereas you can use lesser explosives to go after the road spans but that’s just me projecting. I don’t know for sure, OK.”

The Russians will try to repair it, and the Ukrainians will try to inhibit that.

“The pressure from the Ukrainians on the entirety of the southern front now is probably going to kick up a notch because we’re in a position where the Russians cannot resupply at a meaningful scale and this is how you achieve breakthroughs. So we haven’t seen a lot of over movement on the front so far. We certainly haven’t seen the Ukrainians achieve a breakthrough, but if they can’t do it in these circumstances, then it’s probably not going to happen. So watch Ukraine closely.”

Watch:

Alexander Mercouris provides an analysis of how it was blown up, possibly with two surface drones. He does not see it as a serious problem – it’s inconsequential.

Alexander said the Russians aren’t using the bridge as a railway. They want it to only appear to be a civilian bridge. He claims Russia can keep supplying his men without repairing the bridge. They also have the equipment and men they need. Much of the shipments were done by ship.

They don’t rely on the bridge for transporting troops and equipment.

Mercouris said this is a failure of security on the Russian side.

Putin said they would overcome, calling it a terrorist attack, and there would be a response. Ukraine took credit.

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