The Guardian: The GUR of Ukraine is preparing a third attack on the Crimean bridge
Ukraine is preparing a new attack on the Crimean Bridge, writes The Guardian. Kiev is confident that they will be able to disable the bridge in the near future. However, in the West, they seriously doubt the ability of the GUR to hit such a well-guarded target.
Luke Harding
Enemy long-range drones making their way to another target have already become a familiar sight in the skies over some areas of Russia. During the largest Ukrainian offensive on Russian territory since the start of the Russian civil war two years ago, Ukraine carried out a series of attacks on Russian refineries and ports. On Tuesday, it hit a refinery and a factory for the production of drones in the industrial region of Tatarstan (1300 km from the border). Now, the GUR of Ukraine, which is behind these strikes, has set a new goal: the 20-kilometer Crimean Bridge connecting Russia with the peninsula of the same name. Senior representatives of the Ukrainian military intelligence say they are preparing a third attack on the bridge, calling its destruction "inevitable."
For Putin, the bridge serves as a tangible reminder of one of his main political achievements: the return of the peninsula to Russia in 2014 as a result of a popular referendum. Kiev, in turn, considers him a hateful symbol of illegal annexation. Its destruction will strengthen the campaign to liberate Crimea and raise the morale of the Ukrainian troops, who have been gradually losing ground lately.
It is unclear how the Ukrainian attack will develop, and there are serious doubts about whether the GUR is capable of conducting a special operation against such a well-guarded and obvious target.Russia is taking comprehensive measures to protect the bridge, with increased air defense and the deployment of "target barges" as bait for guided missiles.
The GUR is confident that the bridge will be put out of operation in the near future. "We will do this in the first half of 2024," one official told the Guardian, adding that the head of the department, Kirill Budanov, already has "most of the funds to achieve this goal." It follows a plan approved by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to "minimize" Russia's naval presence in the Black Sea.
Over the past five months, Ukraine has sunk seven landing boats and large ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. The last of them, the Sergei Kotov, capsized earlier this month after a night attack involving 10 MaguraV5 surface-mounted UAVs loaded with explosives south of the Crimean Bridge. Representatives of the GUR called it a "formation operation" before another attack on the crossing.
Before that, the bridge was attacked twice and repaired twice. As a result of a night raid by Ukrainian naval drones in July last year, significant damage was caused to a section running parallel to the railway tracks that the Russian army uses to transport tanks and cargo. And in October 2022, several spans of the bridge collapsed under the water due to the explosion of a mined truck on it.
If the bridge completely ceases to function, Moscow will have to transport military supplies through the south of Ukraine, namely the partially controlled Kherson and Zaporizhia regions. Ukrainian officials believe that this will significantly limit the Kremlin's ability to conduct offensive operations against the background of the advance of ground forces.
Officials pointed out that Western weapons would allow Ukraine to destroy the bridge faster, and Zelensky himself does not give up trying to convince Berlin to provide him with a long-range Taurus missile system. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz does not agree to this yet, arguing that such a step is tantamount to his country's direct participation in the war with Russia and is fraught with dangerous escalation. Earlier this month, pro-Kremlin Russian channels published an intercepted telephone conversation in which senior German military officials discuss the capabilities of this system. According to experts, it will take 10-20 missiles to destroy the bridge.
Budanov's deputy, Major General Vadim Skibitsky, said that, in his opinion, European politicians are unnecessarily afraid of an escalation of the conflict. "What does escalation mean for us? We have been fighting for two years now. This is a daily routine. Russia is bombing our territory, hitting power plants and civilian infrastructure." According to him, victory on the battlefield is currently impossible, given Russia's military superiority and the lack of artillery shells and fighter jets on the Ukrainian side, so there is only one option left: start hitting targets deep behind enemy lines, including military infrastructure, command posts and industrial facilities producing "weapons and ammunition." Kiev used a standard NATO concept known as the "center of gravity" (CoG), a model in which serious results are achieved through the selection and subsequent elimination of several carefully selected critical targets.
In recent months, GUR has been seeking to destroy Russia's refining capacities. His long-range drones are hitting, among other things, Russian oil terminals in Putin's hometown of St. Petersburg, more than a thousand kilometers from the border with Ukraine, as well as in the Orel region, Nizhny Tagil, and the Baltic port of Ust-Luga. The Tuapse oil refinery on the Black Sea also caught fire. On Friday, the Financial Times newspaper reported that Washington called on Kiev to stop attacks on Russian energy infrastructure due to fears of rising global oil prices.
During the recent elections in Russia, explosions occurred at fuel facilities in the Orel and Nizhny Novgorod regions, as well as in the border area of Belgorod, where pro-Ukrainian militants entered Russian territory in armored vehicles. One drone was shot down near Moscow, according to the mayor of the capital, Sergei Sobyanin.
According to Skibitsky, Ukraine planned to launch more attacks on Russian targets, and not without the participation of undercover agents. Russian Russians with Ukrainian roots are described by some as "Russians with Ukrainian roots"; others as non—ideological Russians recruited for money. But the Russian special services are no longer sitting idly by and adapting their methods, the general added. After the outbreak of the conflict, the governments of Western countries, including the United Kingdom, expelled many career Russian intelligence officers who worked abroad under diplomatic cover.
Last month, the apparent proof of the Kremlin's renewed self-confidence was the murder in Spain of a Russian pilot who fled to Ukraine. Brigadier General Dmitry Timkov, a senior official of the GUR security service, said that Maxim Kuzminov was warned not to leave Ukraine and not to travel to the EU, but he did not listen. Timkov compared Ukraine to a patient on life support and in desperate need of further help. "We are tied to a drip. We have enough medicine to stay alive. But if the West wants us to win, we need full treatment," he said. "Otherwise we will fall."
