(unconfirmed) vid …
I suspect the Russians finally figured out how to safeguard their (increasingly diminished) Black Sea fleet from Ukrainian attack, so assets like marine drones are being diverted to attacking stationary targets like the bridge.
The Russian road crews will be busy for awhile.
It looks like one lane may still be useable. That also happened last time.
Are they mooring them underwater to protect them? Seriously, though, I haven’t heard anything about the Russian Navy attacking or being attacked in quite a long time. What’s going on with naval engagements?
Maybe they’re holed up in port?
From that short clip, it doesn’t look like the damage is terribly serious. (for a war zone).
It looks like the right hand lane is damaged, with only a few people standing on it, but the left lane has 3 vehicles parked on it, and appears to be useable.
And on the far left of the video, there is another whole bridge which appears untouched.
How many lanes does the bridge have?
It looks like this clip shows only two lanes of a 4 lane bridge, and of the two, only one is damaged.
Or is the white-colored bridge on the far left for the trains?
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on edit: I just found this clip on bbc that answers my questions:
This video shows that both directions of the road bridge were damaged. The less-damaged side is out of joint. I’m not a structural engineer, so I don’t know how extensive the remedial action would need to be to fix it. I think last time the bridge was attacked, only one direction was affected. The undamaged bridge in the other clip is the rail bridge.
That’s the rail bridge, and it is indeed untouched. Unfortunate, because it’s actually the more important span with regards to military logistics.
This. I seriously can’t believe Lukashenko thinks this is a good idea.
I don’t know. Recent reports are saying that Putin tried, and failed, to oust Prigozhin from his position in Wagner. Now, they’re apparently training Belarussian troops. Seems like a lose/win/win to me. Putin loses face, Wagner gets a cushy behind-the-lines job, which after a year of Bakhmut probably feels like luxury to them, and Belarus gets better training from veteran troops to shore up its own army.
I could see Lukashenko rolling the dice on a possible Wagner coup in exchange for building up his own forces, to either avoid a native-born coup, or to be able to put a bit more distance between himself and the weakening Putin.
For anyone who wants it, here is a general summing-up of the Crimea bridge and it’s history in this war: Crimea bridge attack: What happened, why is the bridge important? | Russia-Ukraine war News | Al Jazeera
Can’t say they (Russia) wasn’t warned. State TV hack and a knife twist at the end.
""It then cut to a blacked-out screen as the warning “the hour of reckoning has come” appeared in bold white Ukrainian words.
Bizarrely, video of ballerinas from Swan Lake then appeared.
It has been reported the ballet was played on loop decades ago after the death of top brass in the Soviet Union, prior to its collapse in 1991."
Also, the attack came on the anniversary of the Russian downing of MH17.
It really doesn’t make sense that this would have been charges placed by a human, because a human placing charges would have prioritized the rail bridge, not the automobile bridge. It pretty much had to have been some sort of not-quite-smart-enough long-range weapon.
Yeah, I posted the video for the view of the damage done on both sides of the road bridge, but I don’t have any opinions on how it was accomplished. Maritime drones seems to be the popular idea.
I don’t know. Wagner’s specialty is propping up unpopular dictators.
That’s a good point, but I’m struggling to decide whether Wagner is more likely to protect Luka from a mutiny/coup by his own army after he tries to enter the war to placate Putin, or to topple Luka themselves for the crime of not entering the war. The problem with mercenaries is that you never know who’s submitted the highest bid for their services.
Satellite imagery:
Meanwhile Putin has declared it a terrorist attack with no logic from a military point of view. That he can’t see the logic of striking at the transportation infrastructure underpinning your enemy’s logistics may go some way to explaining the performance of the Russian armed forces in this war.
He’s just lying for domestic consumption in Russia.