A fire broke out on the morning of Saturday, October 8, on the Crimean Bridge, which connects the peninsula annexed by Russia to the mainland. According to the Russian National Counter-Terrorism Committee, the fire happened after “a truck exploded,” killing three people. Inaugurated in 2018 after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, this bridge across the Kerch Strait is a key communications axis for the Russian army, particularly for ongoing military operations in southern Ukraine, where it suffered from the Ukrainian counter-offensive.
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“This bridge is an obvious military target” for the Ukrainians, Cyrille Bret, geopolitician and researcher at the Jacques Delors Institute, responds to franceinfo. For the Ukrainian authorities, this 18-kilometer bridge is “a symbol of the illegal occupation and annexation of Crimea. It is a clear symbol of Russia’s desire to annex part of Ukraine’s territory,” he adds. Traffic on the Crimean Bridge is currently “restricted” and Russian authorities say road and rail lines are damaged.
“It is an essential infrastructure for the economic integration of Crimea into the Russian Federation: without this bridge, Crimea would be a kind of island off the coast of the Federation.”
Cyril Bret
at franceinfo
“This explosion is a bit like breaking the umbilical cord that the Russian powers and Vladimir Putin himself wanted to establish between Crimea and the proper territory of the Russian Federation,” he adds. The peninsula is connected to the mainland only by the Perekop Isthmus to the north between Crimea and the Kherson region, which was annexed by Russia after a disputed referendum. The 18-kilometer bridge connects the mainland and the Russian Federation in the east, towards the Krasnodar province.
The bridge is both a road bridge and a railway bridge. Even if the authorities downplay the consequences of this fire in their press releases, according to Cyrille Bret, the “civilian and military supply chains in Crimea” will be affected. “Everything that Crimea lacks is transported over this bridge: building materials, food… Economically, Crimea is a somewhat underdeveloped area. After the annexation, before the bridge opened, Russia used ships to transport military equipment to Crimea.
Cyrille Bret also recalls the symbol of this bridge, which was directly intended by Vladimir Putin. “It’s $3 billion and an inauguration with much fanfare in 2018 by the president himself,” he points out. We recall that the Kerch Strait is a true symbol of Russia’s desire to annex a whole part of Ukraine’s territory, not only Crimea, but also the province north of that of Mariupol.