The explosion that caused the partial collapse on Saturday of the Kerch Strait Bridge linking Crimea with Russia illustrates a crucial fact about Ukraine’s war that both sides have been quick to grasp: In a country facing the sea and crisscrossed by rivers, bridges are a vital military asset.
Since Moscow illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, the Kerch rail and road bridge has acted as a supply route to Russia’s big military base on the peninsula in Sevastopol. And since capturing the province of Kherson in southern Ukraine in March, Moscow has used the bridge to ferry troops and equipment to the region through Crimea.
In any war, success is primarily measured on the outcome of battles. But for military planners, control of infrastructure plays a critical role. That’s why it was no surprise to many that when Ukraine launched its counteroffensive in the south in late August, it targeted the bridges that Russia had been using as supply routes.
“Anything that involves water adds incredible logistical constraints in any military operation,” said Samantha de Bendern, an associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, a British think tank. “Controlling a bridge or destroying it is incredibly important.”
One of Ukraine’s highest-profile targets has been the Antonivsky Bridge, which spans the Dnipro River at Kherson City and is almost a mile long. Completed in 1985, the bridge was a symbol to many Ukrainians of engineering prowess. Since July, Ukraine’s military has repeatedly struck the bridge using long-range HIMARS missiles supplied by the United States, making it harder for Russia to resupply as many as 25,000 troops it has stationed on the western shore of the Dnipro.
Ukrainian forces also have targeted three other bridges in Kherson Province, two of which span the Dnipro, northeast of Kherson, and one that crosses the much narrower Inhulets River.
That has forced Russia to construct pontoon bridges, which themselves are vulnerable to attack, and to ferry reinforcements and supplies by boat. In the fight for Kherson Province, however, Ukrainian forces say that both sides have made use of pontoon bridges, and both sides have also made a practice of destroying them, sometimes with the help of drones.
“We build them, they blow them up,” Col. Roman Kostenko, the Ukrainian commander of the troops stationed in Kherson Province, said in August of the pontoon bridges. “They build them, we blow them up.”
Bridges have also proved crucial in battles farther east, not least because troops are exposed to artillery fire when they attempt to cross rivers.
It is no surprise, therefore, that Moscow used a river, in this case the eastern bank of the Oskil River, as its defensive line after it was forced to retreat in Kharkiv Province in the face of a rapid Ukrainian counteroffensive in early September. The Oskil River line has now been breached, with Ukraine making gains farther east.
Ukrainian forces routed a Russian battalion in May as it tried to cross a series of pontoon bridges over the Siversky Donets River.
“Conducting river crossings in a contested environment is a highly risky maneuver,” an agency of the British Ministry of Defense said at the time.
Weeks later, Russian forces — on the advance around two cities in Luhansk Province bisected by the Siversky Donets — were able to pressure Ukrainian troops into a retreat when they shelled the bridges and took them out of use, making resupply and evacuation much more perilous. They captured both cities shortly afterward.
The sudden vulnerability of the Kerch bridge will most likely force Moscow to scramble for alternative ways to supply its troops. Mick Ryan, a military expert, said that one solution could be to route supplies through the city of Melitopol, which Russia captured early in the conflict. But that city has itself been the subject of attacks by Ukrainian partisans.
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October 08, 2022 at 10:43PM
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Crimea Bridge Damaged in Explosion: Latest Russia-Ukraine War News - The New York Times
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