Attack on the South Bridge: changing all the rules of the game

Source : Author’s Facebook page.

1. Recently, there have been several red lines in the Ukrainian-Russian war. And one of them is bridges. We are not attacking the Crimean bridge, the Russians are not attacking the bridges across the Dnieper. Today, this agreement has been violated.

2. The reason for the change in Russia’s bridging strategy seems to lie in several points
– The Russians have at least a two-month window of opportunity, while Ukraine has no protection against rocket launchers. Now, it seems, the decision has been made to check whether these rocket launchers can damage the bridge enough to make it cease to function. The bridge is a fairly strong structure and cannot be demolished with a single blow, but targeted strikes at one point, in theory, could have an effect. Now the Russians have begun this “experiment.”
– Putin is aware that Ukraine will try to attack the Crimean bridge. But, and this is very important, at this stage of the war, the Crimean bridge has lost the sacred symbolic meaning that it had at the beginning of the war.

3. Putin believes that we are now bound by Trump’s pressure regarding strikes on refineries and that we will not dare to respond asymmetrically by scaling up strikes on oil plants and oil processing plants.

4. We have no choice: we need to raise the stakes in negotiations with the US and demand influence over the Russian Federation.

5. The day of the attack on the bridge was not chosen by chance. It was specifically done on the day of the defender.