Almost as if to answer Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s statement the counteroffensive is “slower” than some might have imagined, a pinpoint strike hit a key pair of bridges for Russia’s occupation. The Chonhar bridges are both rail and road crossings, and head from the northeast of occupied Crimea to Ukraine’s main target in this counteroffensive: occupied Zaporizhzhia region.
Video released from the scene by Russian officials shows a significant hole in the road bridge and apparent damage to the neighboring rail track, caused, Russian investigators later said, by four missiles. In the video, Vladimir Saldo, the Russia-installed governor of occupied Kherson region, walks around the wreckage, and bemoans “another pointless action” assisted, he says, by the London-supplied Storm Shadow missile.
“It won’t decide any results of the special operation,” Saldo adds, before admitting it will make some food and other deliveries a little harder. They will have to use another, longer route, he added, to the west through Armyansk and Perekop, closer to Ukrainian positions.
As a singular event, Saldo is correct to say the one attack decides nothing. But it echoes two earlier events: the damage to the Antonovsky Bridge from Kherson City that eventually presaged Russia’s orderly withdrawal from the right side of the banks of the Dnipro River.
And also, less directly, it echoes the damage done last year to the Kerch Strait bridge, which also temporarily disrupted traffic on the only southern supply artery to the peninsula from the Russian mainland. On Sunday, a blast hit what seemed to be a Russian ammunition depot in Rykove, near Chonhar. Blown bridges have a history of impacting both Russian morale and presence.
Alexei Zhivoff, a Russian military blogger, said Thursday the Chonhar bridge was more a “land corridor”, and carried 70% of the military and civilian traffic to and from Crimea. He added the blast showed the area was easily within reach of NATO-supplied missiles and that Russian air defenses were inadequate.
Read the full analysis here.
