Hmm…
It was NOT completely knocked out- several sections of one side of the bridge was knocked down by a powerful bomb in a commercial truck (ether a suicide operation or an unknowing driver with a remotely operated fuse). Ukraine is taking responsibility. Road traffic is still possible on the other roadway. The railroad is operational again after putting out the burning fuel laden cars. Ferries are being restored again northeast of the bridge- which is how traffic proceeded before the 2019 opening of the bridge so this is more of temporary setback, not the devastation that was HOPED.
This bombing has been anticipated since the Ukrainians have threatened constantly since the opening of the bridge. It is a symbol of Russia and why, like dancing Israelis on 9-11, the Ukro-nuts around the world are rejoicing. Sorry, boys. Repair of the bridge segments are anticipated within a month or two.
Good to know. Last night when I posted this, it was all the info I had.
Was hoping someone would come along with more & you did.
Thanks!
I was doing my usual no sleeping and Sergey Baklykov was streaming about it at 2am here- it was already 10 in the morning in St. Petersburg and the explosion happened at 6am. Since then, the Duran has had plenty of people, both from legitimate news or from Russia, who had a lot more information.
Thanks for posting it. I went to sleep after posting & figured someone would have further info. later.
For probably the best review I have heard, Dima of the Military Summary Channel (from Belarus), provided this video today. If you are not interested in his review of the “front line”, listen from the beginning until about 10minutes.
My, my, my, Putler and Arkady Rotenberg (his childhood friend who built the famous bridge), must have had a pretty horrendous hang over (Putler’s birthday was yesterday) today 6am of local time.
Yep, this was probably done by special forces of the Ukraine, but not necessarily. I am maintaining the hypothesis, that we have a serious civil war in Kremlin: hawks vs doves. Part of the RU military (they run Crimea) wants escalation of the conflict, and the other part (Putler represents doves) wants to quiet down all the UKR mess. It’s possible that hawkish RU military wants to embarrass and uproot Putin asap.
Definitely have a good point- nothing black and white in this SMO. Looks like the guy driving the truck that bombed the bridge probably had no clue about what was about to happen. Someone reported that the owner was from Kuban, RU, but then it was later reported that the truck had been sold several days earlier. As I follow Sergey Baklykov, he has plenty of liberal Russians who bad mouth him and Russia. Unlike the USSR, Sergey says you are free to say what you want- but I am betting that someone is watching…
BTW, the gloves are now off in the Ukraine. Russia has assigned a new general to take over and he is reported to be one S O B.
News this morning, key points:
According to the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin Russian citizens and foreign countries were involved. At the Kremlin he stated that the route of the truck which Russia says was blown up on the bridge had been established, saying that it had started out from Bulgaria and travelled by ferry to Georgia, then Armenia, North Ossetia and Russia’s Krasnodar region before reaching the bridge. After announcing that traffic along the bridge had been restored, the Russian authorities admitted that this only concerns cars, and that the bridge is yet to undergo repairs.
The EU should report on insted of obfuscating;
Don’t you mean unlike Putin?
NOPE. Unlike the USSR, just like I said.
Yep, “silovniky” are taking over. Putin had lost driver seat. Not good for the UKR-RU conflict and the rest of the world.
Putin is still the boss but since the Ukro-NaZi’s didn’t want to play fair and not heed the warning, don’t blow up anything in the Russian Federation, he handed the daily bombing strafes over to the General who will play the SMO the way everyone says they should have been operating since February. Can’t have it both ways. You play nice and try to save the infrastructure or in response to these brazen NATO asswipes, you play it their way.
@justawhoaman
Russia couln’t from day one storm in without repercussions. Diplomacy during all these months and building alliances did. India, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, China needed to be on Russia’s side before demolishing others country infra-structure.
I think the fact that Saudi Arabia did not go along with America in more producing oil but with reducing, speaks volumes.
The importance of a single commander
In military operations one of the most important principles is that of unity of command. This means that all forces should operate under a single commander who has the authority to direct these forces in the pursuit of a common purpose.
It has been a principle that, until now, the Russians appear to have steadfastly ignored. The beginning of the invasion featured multiple advances in the north, north-east, east and south of Ukraine, all under different commanders and without any obvious coordinating mechanism.
The Russians tried to fix this situation in April with the [appointment of Aleksandr Dvornikov, a brutal leader and veteran of the Russian campaign in Syria. But Dvornikov struggled in the bitter, attritional fight that was the Donbas.
Even with an overwhelming advantage in artillery, he was only able to wrangle a pyrrhic victory with the capture of Severodonetsk. Thousands of Russians were killed during the battle, and Dvornikov was replaced shortly afterwards.
The chief spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defence subsequently announced that Russian troops were to be divided between the “Army Groups Center” commanded by Colonel General Aleksander Lapin and “South” commanded by Army General Sergei Surovikin.
The series of reverses suffered by the Russians in both these areas over the past two months has obviously convinced the Kremlin to again try a single overall commander in Surovikin.
The reality is there is probably no Russian general alive who can reverse the situation in Ukraine.
The flaws in Russia’s battlefield performance are more deeply rooted than bad Russian command and control, the failed transformation program of the past decade, or poor battlefield leadership
The largest single cause of failure in the Russian invasion has been bad strategy. At the heart of this poor strategy has been bad assumptions and a fundamental misalignment of desired political outcomes with the military means available.
From the beginning of this invasion, Putin has insisted that Ukraine is not a real state and is part of greater Russia. He assumed — based on slovenly analysis provided by his intelligence services — that the Ukrainian military would not fight, that the Russians would be welcomed as liberators and that the West would not intervene decisively.
And because of these strategic assumptions, Russia invaded with a force that was too small, attacked on too many fronts in an uncoordinated way, failed to gain any control of Ukrainian airspace and was behind the curve on strategic influence operations.
Any one of these would be difficult to recover from. All of them in combination are probably fatal for the Russian “special military operation”.
Putin’s crucial error
Putin had one opportunity to drag some perception of success out of the invasion mess in the wake of his speech on May 9.
In his Red Square address, Putin focused the conflict on liberating the Donbas. If he had stuck with that political objective and mobilised his military then to achieve this goal, we may be seeing a very different war now. The Russian military may have been capable of delivering something with these scaled back political objectives that Putin could have sold to the Russian people as a “victory”.
But Putin procrastinated on mobilisation for months. And then his September annexation declaration to incorporate four more Ukrainian provinces into Russia once again expanded the political objectives for this war.
With Russian military stretched to the limit in Ukraine already, and struggling to mobilise more troops, it again demonstrated a misalignment between political objectives and military capacity.
Indeed, the gap between political desires and military means is greater now than it was at the start of the invasion. The newly mobilised troops are likely to be little more than human speed bumps for advancing Ukrainian forces.
In a 1988 article in The National Interest magazine, Williamson Murray and Alan Millet wrote:
“It is more important to make correct decisions at the political and strategic level than it is at the operational or tactical level. Mistakes in operations and tactics can be corrected, but strategic mistakes live forever.”
Throughout this war, Putin has constantly failed to align his political objectives for Ukraine with the military means required to achieve them.
Putin may continue to lob missiles at innocent Ukrainian civilians in the short term. But, he is finding out now how his strategic mistakes will haunt him and the Russian people forever.
Mick Ryan is a strategist and recently retired Australian Army major general. He served in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan, and as a strategist on the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff. His first book, War Transformed, is about 21st century warfare.
There are MANY military strategists who will completely disagree with this analysis. There is no chance of a Ukrainian victory once the mobilization is complete. They have been dragging this into the mud season and into General Winter when no one in the collective west will be prepared for the mud and the cold. They aren’t having ANY problem mobilizing troops. They are in the process of refreshing the contract military, previously trained and on reserve, a total of 300k (not including the Wagner group that took time off nor the Chechen forces- and now maybe even forces from Belarus) who will enter Phase II of this SMO.
This guy should stay in Australia. By my last count, I think WWII was their last major skirmish. This is not fighting “rag heads” in the middle east with the only air cover in the battle.