The Crimea bridge explosion Accelerate the strategic choices that Russian President Vladimir Putin must make regarding Russia’s occupation of southern Ukraine.
This entire existence was already poorly supplied, managed, and regressed. Dilapidated ferry crossings in bad weather or high-risk air cargo flights may now be needed to boost military shipments to Crimea and toward the front lines.
Ukraine has been targeting Russia’s old modes of transportation—particularly its reliance on rail—with slow, healthy precision. Or not isiumWhich led to the collapse around Kharkiv. Then the Lyman, which eroded Russia’s control of Donetsk and Luhansk. And now the bridge of the Kerch Strait, which has become so vital to everything Russia is trying to keep in the south.
Putin now faces a series of quick and painful decisions, all of which will starkly contrast his relentless poker face of pride and ostentation toward signs of slow accumulating defeat.
To the west of the Dnieper, fast-moving Ukrainian troops besieged his army at Kherson. Putin’s forces had already retreated, in part because of the poor resupply that the Kerch explosion would increase.
They were again cut off from this faltering supply line by another series of damaged or targeted bridges across the Dnieper. Over the past week, it has actually retreated over an area of more than 500 square kilometers (about 193 square miles).
Can Moscow maintain such a force on two damaged supply routes? An unstable existence may have become almost impossible overnight.
The second point of the decision concerns Crimea. Putin now faces the difficult choice of bolstering him with depleted forces facing resupply problems, or partially withdrawing his army to ensure that its vast resources on the peninsula are not cut off.
Putin must choose between feeding his larger ambitions with a dwindling chance of success or joining forces around a goal he has a greater chance of achieving.
One carries the risk of catastrophic collapse throughout one’s brutal adventure in Ukraine – and perhaps even his rule. The second leaves him with an immediate loss of face, but a stronger chance of continuing to occupy smaller parts of Ukraine.
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