#Kerch Strait Bridge

[deadpresidents]

A tweet from Ukraine’s national rail service after an explosion severely damaged the Kerch Strait Bridge in occupied Crimea -- Russia’s overland supply link to their war effort against Ukraine and a prized infrastructure project that Vladimir Putin personally celebrated the opening of in 2018 by driving across it in the lead truck in a procession of construction vehicles.

[odinsblog]

Fuck ‘em up Ukraine 🇺🇦

[memenewsdotcom]

Crimea bridge bombed as Russia ends grain deal

[gameofthrones2020]

Kerch Strait Bridge Attack

Unless you’ve lived under a rock you’ve probably heard that the Kerch Strait Bridge was attacked again which will impact the War in Ukraine.

Unless you’ve lived under a rock (or stuck in internet exile), you’ve probably heard that the Kerch Strait Bridge was attacked again. While this attack took Russia’s vehicular transport capabilities offline, there’s much more at stake here. This bridge is Russia’s most crucial logistical infrastructure in this war. It is Russia’s primary method to get equipment, troops, and fuel into the…

[sanktpolypenbourg]

Oh okay excuse me while I just

[paulthepoke]

TWIP: Israel & Lebanon Gas Deal?; Crimean Kerch Bridge Fallout; Kim Jung Un; Food Inflation

Isaiah 10:34 He will cut down the thickets of the forest with an axe, and Lebanon will fall by the Majestic One. On This Week in Prophecy… It would appear Israel and Lebanon have reached a historic agreement in regards to maritime borders and the development of natural gas fields in the Mediterranean Sea. The agreement has not been signed on the dotted line. Details are beginning to leak out…

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

Something has happened on the Kerch bridge, explosions, black and white smoke, traffic closed, Russian imperialists and Russophiles are worried... Ukraine, August 12, 2023. Source: ASLAN

[johnlatter]

Victory Day 2022 - will Zelensky rain on Putin's Parade?

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, president of Ukraine, may become miffed as attention shifts to Vladimir Putin and Russia.

Perhaps Volodymy will throw a tantrum and do something rash - I've absolutely no idea against what, though, nor would I like to suggest anything.

On a completely unrelated note, here's a nice photo of the currently intact Crimean Bridge...

---

The Russian Federation's annual Victory Day parade in the Red Square, Moscow,  commemorates the Soviet Union's part in the 1945 defeat of Nazi Germany.

The parade also reinforces the cultural conditioning imposed on the collective Russian psyche - a subject I'll come back to in a later post.

Image credit: Rosavtodor.ru.

Title: Kerch Strait Bridge (Crimean Bridge), Russia

Subject: Bridge linking Ukraine's Occupied Crimea to Russia.

Comments: The Crimean Bridge (Russian: Крымский мос), also called Kerch Strait Bridge or Kerch Bridge, is a pair of parallel bridges spanning the Strait of Kerch between the Taman Peninsula of Krasnodar Krai in mainland Russia and the Kerch Peninsula of Crimea, which is claimed by both Russia and Ukraine. The Crimean peninsular was occupied by Vladimir Putin's Russian Federation in 2014.

[mariacallous]

When I was a foreign correspondent in West Berlin during the dying days of the Cold War in 1988, a British spy gave me a vivid insight into the state of Germany’s intelligence services.

‘If you want the Kremlin to take something seriously, give it to the Germans and tell them it’s a secret,’ he said. ‘It’ll be on every desk in the Politburo the next morning.’

Clearly little has changed in the intervening years.

On Friday, the Russians revealed that they had eavesdropped on a discussion between the head of the Luftwaffe and three top air force colleagues about the highly contested question of donating Germany’s long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine.

Such weaponry would help that country strike Russia’s logistics depots and supply lines, such as the Kerch Strait Bridge that links Crimea to Russia proper.

Top brass in any self-respecting country would conduct such sensitive discussions on encrypted lines using special handsets, with the participants in secure locations — an arrangement known in this country as a ‘STRAP environment’.

But the gormless Germans used Webex, a conference-call system akin to Zoom.

One participant dialled in from Singapore — using his bog-standard phone. So, too, did the Russian intruders. Unbelievably, nobody noticed the extra, silent participant.

Nothing was decided on the call. The missiles’ delivery remains blocked by German chancellor Olaf Scholz. But the 38-minute recording, released by the Kremlin, did reveal that he has lied to the German public.

According to the brass hats, well-trained Ukrainians could program the missiles with targeting data — something Scholz had claimed would require German specialists on the ground in Ukraine. This would be an impossibly provocative step in his view.

But the worst damage was done not to reputations but to allied security.

‘If we’re asked about delivery methods, I know how the British do this. They always transport them in Ridgeback armoured vehicles. They have several people on the ground,’ said the head of the German air force, Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz, referring to the Storm Shadow missiles that we have donated to Ukraine.

Discussing military secrets on an open phone line is a sackable offence. But you cannot sack a whole country. Western allies are confronting the reality that our biggest and richest European ally is an appalling liability.

No 10 yesterday described the leak as ‘a very serious matter’ but declined to be drawn on whether there are plans to restrict our intelligence- sharing with Berlin.

But no one would blame them if they were considering just such a response. After all, Scholz is in the doghouse for other reasons, too.

Only last Monday, he let slip that British soldiers were on the ground in Ukraine assisting with the use of our Storm Shadow missile system.

This would come as no surprise to Moscow. But it is still embarrassing to have a sensitive detail blurted out by the leader of a supposedly trustworthy partner.

Chairman of the Commons’ Foreign Affairs Committee, Alicia Kearns, didn’t hold back, describing the blunder as ‘wrong, irresponsible and a slap in the face’.

The bleak truth is that, in the eyes of Western allies, Germany is now regarded as worse than useless.

And no branch of its security set-up is in a more parlous state than its clueless, leaky secret services. A senior official in the German foreign intelligence service, identified only as Carsten L, and an alleged accomplice, Arthur E, went on trial in December for spying for Russia. The pair were arrested, not thanks to German diligence, but thanks to a tip from the FBI.

Former CIA officer John Sipher describes German spies as: ‘Arrogant, incompetent, bureaucratic, useless’.

Yet it is no laughing matter for the Ukrainians that Scholz dithers on sending weapons. High hopes of the Zeitenwende — ‘change of eras’ — that he announced after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 have shrivelled.

Germany’s puny military remains under-equipped, ill-led and cash-strapped. Berlin’s aversion to hard thinking about security lies partly in its two catastrophic defeats last century, and its role as a potential nuclear battleground during the Cold War.

This past stokes anti-Americanism and anti-militarism. ‘Even the worst peace is better than the best war,’ said a leading German thinktanker as Ukraine began its struggle for survival.

The idea that freedom might be worth dying for counts for nothing.

Greed also plays a big role. Germany has obsessively pursued lucrative deals with Russia and China.

That contributed to Germany’s blind spot when it came to its eastern neighbours such as Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Yet it was these countries that the Hitler-Stalin pact fed into the meat-grinder in 1939.

Germany owes them a huge historical debt but, instead of making strenuous efforts to boost their security, Berlin blocked Nato defence plans for these states for years.

Worse, German spymasters stole their secrets. As I revealed in my book Deception, the German BND — the counterpart to our MI6 — recruited a top defence official in Estonia, Herman Simm, in order to keep an eye on American influence there.

What the Germans did not know was that Simm was also spying for the Russians. The damage was colossal.

I am no Germanophobe. I lived and worked there for many years. I tried to alert Germans to the danger presented by nascent, and now revived, Russian imperialism. The response was patronising and incredulous.

Meanwhile, Russian spies, thugs and crooks ran riot under the noses of the bureaucracy-bound German police and security services.

That reflects another legacy of the past: a resistance to state surveillance, thanks to the long shadows cast by Hitler’s Gestapo and then the Stasi, communist East Germany’s secret police.

Ultra-strict data-protection and privacy laws stop German authorities conducting the simplest security checks.

The consequences of this were recently highlighted by journalist Michael Colborne, who took only 30 minutes to track down a fugitive Left-wing terrorist, 65-year-old Daniela Klette, of the murderous Baader-Meinhof gang.

She had been living in Berlin under a false identity, despite being on Germany’s most-wanted list. A simple internet picture search led to her hasty arrest by the hitherto ignorant German police.

Germany’s policy makes it the weakest link in Europe’s defence. Suppose that Russia, boosted by success in Ukraine, tests Nato’s resolve in Poland or the Baltic states?

These states would respond with flinty and furious resistance. We and other allies will want to help them. But suppose Germany cries ‘Diplomaten statt Granaten’ — ‘Diplomats instead of grenades’ — and demands that the crisis be solved through talks not war?

Sitting, as it does, on the North European Plain, Germany and its supply lines would be vital in rushing aid and ammunition to the front. Yet Berlin might bristle at direct involvement and close its borders and airspace to allied reinforcements.

This nightmarish prospect is not fiction. Germany closed its airspace to reinforcement flights at the start of the Ukraine war. The uncomfortable truth is that Germany slumbers as Europe burns, and that means sleepless nights for the rest of us.

[dailyoverview]

An explosion this morning destroyed sections of the Kerch Strait Bridge, which connects the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula to Russia. The 13-mile (21-kilometer) structure is the only bridge to cross the strait and has served as an important supply route for Russian troops fighting in southern Ukraine. This Overview shows collapsed sections of road and flames coming from a train on the bridge’s railroad section.

45.308600°, 36.506100°

Source imagery: Maxar

[warsofasoiaf]

Why did Khrushchev make Crimea part of Ukraine?

It was a lot easier to administer that way. It was far easier to make it part of the Ukranian SSR and utilize the land corridor, existing power lines, and Ukrainian irrigation infrastructure to alleviate supply problems (Crimea to this day struggle with fresh water absent the North Crimea Canal).

Since any autonomy that the Ukrainian SSR possessed was largely a fig leaf, Russia was still able to administer it as its principal port on the Black Sea. When the Soviet Union collapsed, however, Russia lost its port. They originally had just established a leasing agreement with Ukraine, but as the years went on and Ukrainian opinions toward Russia soured, the arrangements became increasingly untenable, causing Putin to invade and annex the territory in 2014, building the Kerch Strait bridge to build a road and rail transit line to the peninsula.

This is actually a running pattern with Russia and Ukraine. Believe it or not, under the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine was guaranteed by Russia the ability to maintain strict independence in foreign affairs, to join any organizations it wished - even NATO or the EU. At the time of the signing, Ukraine was overtly pro-Russian and it was believed that if Ukraine would join any defensive alliance, it'd be CSTO, and it would maintain close ties to the Russian Federation. When Ukraine pivoted more towards the West (and the EU and USA mended relations), these arrangements were quickly forgotten.

Thanks for the question, George.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[seymour-butz-stuff]

It would appear that Russia and China have been secretly discussing an alternative to Putin’s much vaunted vanity project … the Kerch Straits bridge.  The idea being that the two countries will form a consortium to allow China to build a rail/road tunnel under the straits. Putin now knows it is not a question of if but how soon Ukraine will completely demolish his illegal bridge.  This tunnel project is problematic on so many levels not counting the fact that it will be happening in an active war zone and thus a target for Ukraine. 

[theothin]

The Russian government’s continued failure to put Russian society on a war-time footing will have significant impacts on Russian logistics as traffic from Russian tourism to occupied Crimea jams Russian logistics to southern Ukraine in the midst of the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south. The Kerch Strait Bridge is along one of two ground lines of communication (GLOCs) supporting Russia’s southern force grouping, with the other route passing through occupied Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson Oblasts. This sole remaining logistics route is now a single point of failure for the supply of the large numbers of mechanized Russian forces in southern Ukraine needed to resist Ukrainian counteroffensives. Russian and occupation officials have nevertheless continued to promote occupied Crimea as a tourist destination, however, urging Russian civilians to drive through and to a warzone rather than advising them to avoid it as a responsible government would.[8] Russian occupation authorities recently struggled to mitigate traffic issues just from increased Russian tourism across the Kerch Strait Bridge, as ISW has previously reported.[9] Russian President Vladimir Putin even ordered the use of Russian military assets to ferry tourists across the Kerch Strait.[10] Some Russian milbloggers also suggested that the attack against the Kerch Strait Bridge should not reduce continued tourist flows.[11]

what?

[ukrainenews]

”

A powerful truck explosion seriously damaged Russia’s road-and-rail bridge to Crimea on Saturday, hitting a prestige symbol of Moscow’s annexation of the peninsula and the key supply route to Russian forces battling to hold territory captured in southern Ukraine.

The blast on the bridge over the Kerch Strait, for which Russia did not immediately assign blame, prompted gleeful messages from Ukrainian officials but no direct claim of responsibility.

Russian investigators said three people had been killed, probably the occupants of a car travelling near the truck that blew up.

Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and the 19-km (12-mile) Kerch bridge linking it to Russia’s transport network was opened with great fanfare four years later by President Vladimir Putin, who drove a construction truck across it.

It now represents a major artery for the Russian forces who have taken control of most of southern Ukraine's Kherson region, and for the naval port of Sevastopol, whose governor told locals: "Keep calm. Don't panic."

It was not yet clear if the blast was a deliberate attack, but the damage to such high-profile infrastructure came at a time when Russia has suffered several battlefield defeats and could further cloud the Kremlin's messages of reassurance to its public that the conflict is going to plan.

It also took place a day after Putin's 70th birthday.

The head of Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council, Oleksiy Danilov, posted a video of the burning bridge on social media alongside a video of Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy birthday, Mr President".

Since the start of the invasion on Feb. 24, Ukrainian officials have made regular allusions to their desire to destroy the Kerch bridge, seen in Ukraine as a symbol of Russia's occupation of Crimea. Ukraine's postal service said on Saturday it would print a special stamp to commemorate the blast.

Russia's Defence Ministry said in a statement that its forces in southern Ukraine could be "fully supplied" through existing land and sea routes, and the Transport Ministry said rail traffic across the bridge would resume by 1700 GMT.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Kyiv's reaction to the destruction of civilian infrastructure "testifies to its terrorist nature".

The Russian National Anti-Terrorism Committee said a freight truck had blown up on the bridge's roadway at 6:07 a.m. (0307 GMT), causing seven fuel tanker wagons to catch fire on a train heading for the peninsula on the bridge's upper level.

It said two spans of road bridge had partially collapsed, but that the arch spanning the Kerch Strait, the waterway through which ships travel between the Black Sea and Azov Sea, was not damaged.

'THE BEGINNING'

Images posted by the Russian Investigative Committee showed one half of the roadway blown away, and the other half still attached, but cracked.

Others taken from a distance showed thick smoke pouring from part of the bridge.

An adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy posted a message on Twitter saying the incident was just "the beginning" but stopped short of saying Ukrainian forces were responsible for the blast.

"Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything that is stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled," Mykhailo Podolyak wrote.

Moscow has presented largely Russian-speaking Crimea as a historic and cherished part of Russia and, especially this year, one where Russians could holiday in large numbers, supposedly safe from the war.

On Saturday, hundreds of people who had hoped to drive to Crimea from the Russian town of Kerch were redirected to the ferry port, only to find that high winds were preventing any sailings.

Kirill Stremousov, the Russian-installed deputy administrator of the Kherson region, said the bridge incident "will not affect the army supply very much".

"But there will be problems with logistics for Crimea," he added in a post on social media.

Mykola Bielieskov of the Ukrainian Institute of Strategic Studies, which advises the presidency in Kyiv, said the Kerch bridge was irreplaceable for Russia's invasion forces, and if it were severed, "the whole Russian southern front will crumble quickly and easily".

Although Moscow's forces have seized a stretch of coastal Ukraine linking the Kherson region and Crimea to Russia, Bielieskov said the transport connections there were poor, and that Russia had preferred to send reinforcements to Kherson along the more circuitous route of the bridge into Crimea.

Russian Railways said trains heading for Crimea would be subject to extra checks, and that it was working with the government to find the "best way to deliver goods to the peninsula".

In a video message Aksyonov, the Crimea governor, said he wanted to "assure Crimeans that the Republic of Crimea is fully provided with fuel and food. We have more than a month's worth of fuel, and more than two months' worth of food".

However, the Russian Energy Ministry said on Telegram that Crimea had only 15 days of motor fuel.

The Russian governor of Sevastopol, which has separate territorial status in Crimea as home to the Black Sea fleet, also sought to reassure locals.

"We are not cut off from the mainland!" Mikhail Razvozzhayev posted on Telegram. "Keep calm. Don't panic."

[otthonzulles]

végre egy kibaszott jó hír! súlyos támadás érte a kercsi szoros hídját, kamionnyi autóbomba robbant fel, a fél autópálya a vízbe omlott. "épp akkor" volt a detonáció, amikor a párhuzamos vasúti hídon is tartályvonat közlekedett.

boldog születésnapot, vologya