Russia’s Illegal Bridges Have Ukrainian Crosshairs on Them

On Aug. 12, Ukrainian forces launched a combined drone and missile attack on the Kerch Strait crossing, in the second major attack in a month on the twin bridges that link the occupied Crimean Peninsula to the Russian mainland.

Russia’s perennially apoplectic Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, responded in her usual manner: “There can be no justification for such barbaric actions and they will not go unanswered,” she said.

However, I fear the Russian Foreign Ministry is in for a shock when it discovers that its furious diplomatic interjections have still not deterred Ukraine from targeting the 19-kilometer bridges—a piece of critical military infrastructure illegally erected following Russia’s invasion and occupation of Crimea in 2014. It is vital that Ukraine’s Western allies support Kyiv’s efforts, which are a key step in the process of liberating Crimea from Russian control.

Ukraine has made it clear that efforts to destroy the bridges will continue. Last month, Kyiv finally claimed responsibility for an explosion, which was carried out by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) using a truck fitted with an explosive device, on Oct. 8 last year. Speaking after the Aug. 12 attack, in one of his regular video updates, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was bullish and referred directly to the “very eloquent smoke on Kerch bridge,” in reference to the smoke screen Russia deployed during the reported drone attack.

Speaking in an interview with Fareed Zakaria at the Aspen Security Forum in July, Zelensky said: “The [Crimean Bridge] is not just a logistical road. This is the road that is used to feed the war with ammunition. … It is militarizing the Crimean Peninsula. For us, this is an enemy facility built outside international law, so understandably, it is an objective.” He added that “any target that is bringing war, not peace, must be neutralized.”

Zelensky is correct that the bridges, both road and rail, are vital to the logistics sustaining Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and are used to facilitate the transfer of huge amounts of material being used on the front lines of occupied southern Ukraine.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, it pushed troops into the south of Ukraine from Crimea. The Russian Black Sea Fleet imposes a naval blockade of Ukraine’s southern coast from its base on occupied Sevastopol and routinely launches cruise missiles targeting Ukrainian cities from the Black Sea. The Russian Air Force bombards Ukraine using the Saky air base in occupied Novofedorivka. The rail and road bridges across the Kerch Strait transfer tens of thousands of tons of military equipment into Ukraine to sustain the Russian military occupation of Ukraine’s coastline.

Zelensky is also correct that the international community continues to view Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and subsequent occupation and construction of military infrastructure as a violation of international law, with the EU and United States both condemning the partial opening of the crossing in 2018.

Alarm bells, however, have been ringing in Kyiv following remarks made in Norway by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s chief of staff, Stian Jenssen, who suggested that Ukraine could “give up territory and get NATO membership in return.” The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry shot back immediately, with spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko calling the suggestion “completely unacceptable.”

Amid concerns in some Western capitals about the progress of Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive, many of which frustrate Kyiv due to the scale of the daunting battles ahead of its forces, there is a growing sense of unease that diplomatic support for Ukraine’s military objectives may be waning.

The Ukrainian government is very clear that its objectives are unchanged, intending the liberation of all the occupied territories, including the Crimean Peninsula and the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk seized by Russian-backed groups in 2014. The Ukrainian people are similarly resolute, with two-thirds of the population supporting the liberation of all of the currently Russian-occupied territories, including Crimea.

Crimea remains vital strategically, politically, and geographically to both the authorities in Kyiv and the Ukrainian people as a unified polity. Geographically and strategically, the peninsula, or rather, the Kerch Strait itself, provides a natural choke point for naval access to the Sea of Azov, giving whoever controls the crossing considerable control over most of Ukraine’s southern coast. There should be little doubt that, for the foreseeable future, the Ukrainian electorate would not countenance any proposal to relinquish or recognize Russian legitimacy over any part of Ukraine’s sovereign territory.

But most importantly, a Russian-occupied Crimea, which equates to a highly militarized Crimea, remains an existential threat to Ukraine as a state. Crimea has already been used as a staging ground for two invasions of Ukraine’s sovereign territory, and the Russian seizure of Crimea in 2014 must be understood in the context of the wider war, as Crimea was the opening military foothold Moscow needed to invade the south of Ukraine. The Russian military facilities across Crimea have already been used to destroy vast swaths of Ukraine’s infrastructure, particularly along Ukraine’s southern coast, with attacks stretching from Odesa to Mariupol all launched from the peninsula.

Moscow has already put this question beyond all reasonable doubt and, after the Minsky Protocol and Minsk II and countless other violated international treaties and norms, cannot be trusted diplomatically, politically, or militarily by Ukraine to have any postbellum military presence in Crimea.

There is a sense here in Ukraine, however, that the closer to that goal Ukraine gets, the louder some voices pressuring Kyiv against it will get. Arguments made in opposition to Ukraine reconquering the Crimean Peninsula fail to appreciate the reality of that threat and give succor to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear bluster.

For too long, the debate about Ukraine has been centered in the West on how Putin and Russia would react to losing the territory Moscow illegally annexed in 2014 and not on how a Russian-occupied Crimea functions as a core component of Russia’s attempted military domination of its sovereign democratic neighbor.

Not only will Ukrainian strikes on the Kerch Strait crossing continue, but they are also very likely to intensify in the near future, and if Ukraine’s counteroffensive manages to liberate the majority of its southern coast at any time in the foreseeable future, it is almost certain that Putin’s beloved bridges will end up at the bottom of the ocean before the end of the war.

Ukraine’s allies can make a difference here by finally providing Kyiv with the long-range missile systems it has been asking for. Sending U.S.-made ATACMS and German Taurus cruise missile systems would put much more of Russia’s military infrastructure within Ukrainian missile range and would spell disaster for the Kerch Strait bridges. This increased capability would provide Ukraine the opportunity to finally respond to the routine bombardment Ukrainian cities have suffered since the start of this war due to Russia’s Crimean military facilities.

Moscow remains emboldened diplomatically and militarily around the peninsula because these bases are currently far enough from the front line that they can function with relative impunity.  Ukraine is trying to shift that dynamic already. Increasing Ukraine’s long-range capabilities would swiftly disabuse them of that notion.

But both Moscow’s and Kyiv’s international allies need to understand that even without the bridge, a Russian-occupied Crimea poses a critical threat to Ukraine’s survival, and as far as the Ukrainian government is concerned, the destruction of the Kerch Strait bridges will only serve as a prelude to the eventual campaign for the total liberation of the Crimean Peninsula.

Ukraine may pull this off. It won’t stop trying—and there is no point in diplomats or analysts laboring under the absurd assumption that the Ukrainian position on this can be negotiated away in a future deal.