The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Why the Kerch Strait Bridge Attack is BAD for Russia || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: July 20, 2023

Unless you've been living under a rock (or stuck in the mountains), you've probably heard that the Kerch Strait Bridge was attacked again. While this attack took Russia's vehicular transport capabilities offline, there's much more at stake here. Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/why-the-kerch-strait-bridge-attack-is-bad-for-russia

Hey everybody, Peter Zion here. Apologies for this getting to you late. The news is from the night of the 16th and 17th of July. Somebody blew up part of the Kurtzstraight Bridge in southern Ukraine again. And you're getting this a little bit late because I'm getting this message literally in an area called the No Men's Wilderness. So I got the information by satellite text. It is going to take a day or two for me to get to a place where I can transmit. But let me tell you what I know and then we'll add a little addendum at the end. if it's necessary. So the Kerch Strait Bridge, first of all, what is it? It's the single most important

piece of logistics in the Ukraine war. It is the primary method that the Russians used to get equipment and men and ammo and especially fuel into the front, specifically over this bridge that crosses the Kerch Strait, which is a body of water separating the Sea of Zov in eastern Ukraine from the Black Sea proper. The problem the Russians have, the reason they like the bridge so much, is if they try to send things through the mainland route, going through the provinces of Kyrson and Zepernitia, it's within a rocket and artillery range, and the Ukrainians have shown that they're targeting, especially with intelligence provided by the Western Allies, is sufficiently good to hit most trains in that area as they're passing through. So that means they would have to go to

convoys, and that takes significantly longer, and they can't move nearly as much gear or people, and especially fuel. So they like to use the Kurd straight bridge, get the stuff into Crimea, and then take other methods of distribution through the northern part of the peninsula into the southern front. Now, where were we just before this attack? Well, if you go back to last autumn, someone blew up the Kurtz Strait Bridge. No one claimed responsibility, but it was clearly the Ukrainians or maybe the Americans. Anyway, what happened was a vehicle explosive back last year blew up one of the spams. There are four spans that matter, or four transport routes that matter. There's two two-lane road routes and there's two single line rail routes. And the vehicle explosive destroyed one of the

vehicle routes and the explosion was proximate to a cargo train that was going by. So it started a fuel tank fire which destroyed one of the rail routes and severely damaged the second one. In the weeks that followed, the Russians were able to repair that road span, but they were never able to bring the destroyed rail system back online even today. And then as of about a month ago, the other rail line had been rated for passenger traffic and what they like call light cargo. So, you know, no tanks or fuel tankers. So they can send some ammo. They can certainly send people and troops, but they certainly can't send fuel in the volume that they would like. There is really no alternative to the Kurdstrait Bridge. That northern route that goes on mainland Ukraine is too

easy to interdict. And the Ukrainians have proven time and time and time and time again with missiles and underwater drones that they can attack maritime vessels. They have become so problematic that the Russians are no longer even stationing their military vessels in the Crimean Peninsula at all. They've pulled them all back to their port city of Noveros-Seek on the northeast shore of the Black Sea. Okay. What this new attack did was again attack the vehicle spans, but this time from below. They completely took out one of the vehicle spans again and severely damaged the second one, which means the only way that the Kerchspray bridge can function now is that one remaining rail link that is operating at partial capacity, the light cargo one of them. And that's it.

This is extraordinarily bad for the Russians. I mean, forget passenger traffic in and out, although the Russians have this hilarious government program to encourage tourism in Crimea during a war zone. Yes, yes, yes, take a bridge that has been attacked several times, whatever. Anyway, hang on for a second. I'm going to switch views here so you can see the other way. That's Independence Pass behind me, one of the highest road passes in America, and I'm well above it, here on Geistler Peak. Okay, where was I? Okay, if the Russians prove unable to get this line repaired fairly quickly, and who knows, that's a disaster for Russian forces. They're all already under extreme pressure from the Ukrainians.

The Ukrainians have already hit a number of bridges and road and rail connections in and out of the northern part of Crimea, which was already constraining the Russian logistics. Now they can't bring anything fresh at all at scale. So if the Russians can't just get this back up online, all the 100-odd thousand troops that they have in Crimea are going to be completely on their own.

Also, in the aftermath of the destruction of the Kakova Dam earlier this year, There will be no food grown at scale in the Crimean Peninsula at all. When the Kakova Reservoir drained, it dropped the water level below what was necessary to fill the irrigation trenches. And that is bad for Zaporinza, that is bad for Kyrgyzine, that is bad for Crimea. So the Russians no longer have the capacity to bring in food in volume, which means unless the Russians want to face the mother of all global embarrassments and have the entire Russian population of Crimea, which there's over 2 million people, plus 100-odd-thousand Russian troops

become hostages of the Ukrainians. They need to start a mass evacuation as soon as possible. My guess is that this is not going to happen because the Russians have shown remarkably unable to carry information up to the top, so it's entirely possible that Putin doesn't know just how dire the situation is. And this, of course, assumes that there's no additional attack,

to complicate repair efforts or just cause fresh damage to any parts of the system. I mean, we're at a point now where a medium-range missile could temporarily take out that one remaining rail connection, and that's all she wrote. The Russians are going to fight it very hard to repair things in a counter-offensive situation, but they're also going to find it very hard to convoy everything they need out by land. So that one remaining rail link of its impartial capacity, that's all they got. Of course, there's the question of how is this done? Now, we know that the explosions came from below the road system.

Not on top. This was not a vehicle bomb like it was before. So either a special forces group that blew up one of the pylons, or it was a series of underwater drones that did something similar. The Ukrainians do have the capacity to do that. They've attacked Sevastopol, which is that naval base on the southwest coast of the Crimean Peninsula several times, using weapons like these. But the Ukrainians are not claiming specific means or even responsibility. the Russians, of course, are blaming the American and the British government.

I don't want to say it wasn't the Americans, or it wasn't the British, but I would suspect if it was the Americans, we would have not hit the road section. We would have hit the rail section because that would have had a much more desired impact upon the war effort by breaking the really strong rail connection that the Russians really need, whereas you can use lesser explosives to go after the road spans. But that's just me projecting, I don't know for sure. Okay. next steps the Russians are going to try to repair the Ukrainians are going to try to inhibit that

and the pressure from the Ukrainians on the entirety of the southern front now is probably going to kick up a notch because we're in a position where the Russians cannot resupply at meaningful scale and this is how you achieve breakthrough so we haven't seen a lot of overmovement on the front so far we certainly haven't seen the Ukrainians achieve breakthrough but if they can't do it in these circumstances and that's probably not going to happen. So watch Ukraine closely. Take care. Bye.