alt Hacker NewsBut it also stands to ask, why isn't the bridge being constantly targeted? What factors are weighing ukrainian decisionmaking to not simply strike the hell out of this bridge until it falls?
The strikes ukraine makes in russian territory seem like they are extremely successful but limited in quantity and scope. Why not push that envelope? Some factors must exist that prefer these attacks to be small scale headline makers vs actual large scale destruction.
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> Why not push that envelope?
The US have have been a nightmare for Ukraine, obstructive and unreliable. The European allies have slowly stepped up, but it’s been painful.
As dependence on the US has reduced, you can see the Ukrainian attacks increase in number, range and audacity.
Distant targets are getting hit. This week shipping had been hit hard, and the Crimea has taken a lot of damage. Bridges and logistics.
It’s all happening. Keep an eye on https://old.reddit.com/r/ukraine/
It’s a heavily skewed perspective but it if often accurate.
> But it also stands to ask, why isn't the bridge being constantly targeted? What factors are weighing ukrainian decisionmaking to not simply strike the hell out of this bridge until it falls?
This is a spitball, but there are several hundred thousand ethnic Ukrainians in Crimea (along with many more ethnic non-Ukrainians who were previously Ukrainian citizens and have been more-or-less forced to take on Russian citizenship since 2014). Even if the Ukrainian war machine wanted to commit war crimes and/or genocide by completely starving out a city of 2.5 million (unclear if this is true or not, at least to me), they would be -- at least partially -- commiting them against their own people.
> But it also stands to ask, why isn't the bridge being constantly targeted? What factors are weighing ukrainian decisionmaking to not simply strike the hell out of this bridge until it falls?
It's not as easy as it sounds to put the weight of ordnance required in the very tight windows that would be needed to actually cause more than cosmetic or minor damage to that bridge.
Ukraine did pull off a spectacularly successful operation to destroy a laden fuel truck while it was crossing the bridge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Crimean_Bridge_explosion)... Russia repaired the damage within months and simply redirected fuel transport to other means.
Russia also has dedicated a large amount of air defense and EM jamming resources to protect the bridge, which increases the difficulty of pulling something off for Ukraine.
For a long time Ukraine didn't have the types of weapons that would be needed to even attempt it outside of saboteur types of actions. Now they have some precise ordnance like Storm Shadow but even these weapons are not destructive enough to take the bridge down except in large quantities, and those are quantities they seem to have decided are best put towards other targets.
Ukraine has recently seen substantial success in finding better weapons, with drones that can engage in "medium-range" scenarios to close off the so-called land bridge from Russia to Crimea. These weapons have also helped in degrading Russia's own defenses, but with this in mind Ukraine may feel it best to leave the Kerch bridge standing for now to allow Russian occupiers to flee across the bridge back to Russia, since Ukraine has the northern land route through occupied territories under much more effective fire control than at any point since 2022.