Ukraine Invasion: Part 32

[MagicFox]

Gosh, that last one filled up quick! Welcome to 32, all 🇺🇦

All ships stopped too...

Yeah who knows? Some people are reporting multiple events were involved ie something launched at the same time as the truck explosion (from under the bridge perhaps) so we'll have to wait and see

Railway portion of bridge looks like it's about to collapse too

I think POTUS should be careful in his statements as when he speaks his words reach billiions, not only in the US and they are taken seriously

I think he generally is.

Personally and TBH I don't see what the issue was with his comments of a couple of days ago. As I read it nothing he said pointed to any substantial change in the threat in the last few weeks/months, he stated that there would be a western response if there was a strike (been said before), and like everybody else he was wondering how Putin gets out of this...

To my ears it was pretty much the same old same old but the MSM used it as click bait and it's triggered another rash of threads here.

The only way to avoid the MSM triggering some people going into worry/panic mode is for POTUS to not comment at all on the issue and that's not going to happen.

And a potential escape route cut...

Should have said choked/narrowed rather than cut ....the civilian population response to this could be interesting.

I would imagine blind panic.

Rob Lee has posted footage of the actual explosion. (at RALee85)

In the comments below there is suggestion that a boat was under the bridge at the time of the explosion.

The footage seems to show a white light before the explosion when the truck on the bridge was still intact too.

I can't link to tweet atm as I'm on my phone.

The ferry taking stuff in, isnt going to be returning empty thats for sure....

Yes I saw that too Red, he suggests a missile attack

Queues for fuel are already forming in Crimea.

The bridge takes 15000 vehicles a day. Ooops. But don't worry the ferry will be up and running later today.

A couple of selected tweets from thread (whole thread worth reading). There isn't just an issue with the Kerch...

Dr Mike Martin AT threshedthought
It seems this is part of isolating Russian forces. About two or three nights ago there was a massive Ukrainian bombardment of the rail depot in Tokmak (1). It’s the only rail line that runs east-west there.

Now this morning the Ukr have dropped the Kerch bridge, supposedly via a truck bomb (2). Interesting method, if true. I wonder what happened to the driver?

And one assumes we are shortly to see (3) an offensive by the Ukr to sever completely and isolate the Russian forces in Crimea and Kherson. There has been lots of chatter from Russian telegram channels about repositioning of Ukr units for this assault.

NB The Ukrainians aren’t going to go near the city of Melitopol I wouldn’t imagine. They only want to sever the Russia supply, not attack a city full of their own civilians.

However - there are other options open to the Ukrainians. The Russians are expecting an attack in the Melitopol area (it would be most advantageous to the Ukr).

But they could just sever the rail link at Tokmak (winter is coming and roads become difficult), and then strike somewhere else - anywhere on that long southern front would do to achieve the same effect.

Oops.

“Putin should be happy. Not everyone gets such an expensive present on their birthday,” a senior Ukrainian military official told the New York Times, while neither denying nor confirming Ukrainian forces are behind the attack on the Crimean Bridge.

Mick Ryan AT warinthefuture
It is too early to ascertain the method of attack and the range of implications of this attack on the Kerch Bridge. It is certainly a punch in the face for Putin on his birthday. A couple of thoughts however in this short (for me) thread. 1/9

2/ First dropping a bridge span like this would take a lot of ‘bang’ (explosives) and good demolition design. As a sapper, we plan these kind of things all the time. The hardest bridges to drop are reinforced concrete like this.

3/ The amount of explosive required would be more than a few SF personnel could carry. A few trucks, or missiles / bombs would do the trick, if aimed at the right points of the bridge span.

4/ Second, the Ukrainians so far have been excellent at operational design and shaping operations in advance of their advances. This could be part of their design for taking back Crimea in the short term - or part of a deception operation to distract from other areas.

5/ Either way, it presents the Russians with a significant problem. It doesn’t stop resupply to Crimea (there are boats and the route through Melitopol), but it makes holding Melitopol even more important for the Russians.

6/ This would be the point in a class that the instructor would ask “so, what do we think the next operational objective for the Ukrainians might be?” Because of this, we may see Russian redeployments in the south, which will unveil other weaknesses & opportunities for Ukraine.

7/ A third and final point: this is a massive influence operation win for Ukraine. Even if they didn’t do it, it is a demonstration to Russians, and the rest of the world, that Russia’s military cannot protect any of the provinces it recently annexed.

8/ And if we were impressed by the outflow of Russians after the recent naval aviation base attack, the rush to leave Crimea will be probably be even greater now. Lack of confidence in Putin and his military will grow.

9/ I am sure we will learn more details in the coming hours and days. But this ‘smoking incident’ is sure to be linked to other events in Ukraine’s overall military strategy. A bad month for Russia just keeps getting worse. Good. End.

A single truck attack? Really?

Julia Davis AT juliadavisnews
Is that an off-ramp down there?

With pic of Bridge in the water...

A single truck attack? Really?

I gather those that know about bridges and even know about blowing bridges up (Cold war retreat thing that some sappers were trained in ) say a very big truck bomb is certainly within the bounds of possibility..how the truck got there and what happened to the driver???

The other obvious one is a strike by a single big missile strike, some have thoughts about a boat seen in one of the videos.

Other things that don't make immediate sense / alternative ideas

1. if bridge destruction has to be precise in the point it hits, don't you have to park the truck? Moving at time of detonation reduces your chances of success surely?
2. It's being suggested that truck was going from Russia to Crimea. That's a shit load of explosives to find in Russia if that's true.
3. this article from September on drone boats www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/mystery-drone-boat-washes-up-near-home-of-russias-black-sea-fleet

I'm just not feeling this suicide truck theory alone.

If it was a duicide truck driver ...someone who has lost all his family in the invasion?

Possible a slow accumulation of explosives somewhere near the Russian end of the bridg and it was loaded up overnight and driven on?

I can't put my finger on why, but I think the Ukrainians have something big planned for this weekend.

You were right @MissConductUS :-D

They marked Putin's birthday in Helsinki at least... with portraits of various dictators, including Putin, and their years of birth and death "The median lifetime of militant dictators proved to be seventy years, as shown in the pictures. Vladimir Putin is celebrating his seventieth birthday today, 7th October – his warranty is about to expire," the organisers said in a statement.

yle.fi/news/3-12653520

Good morning. Bloody hell. I had been wondering for a while why Ukraine didn’t do this so I read a few Twitter threads and the consensus seemed to be that they would probably leave the road up so civilians could escape but take out the railway line as that’s more important to supplies, but none of this would happen till later.
But it’s the road that’s gone?

TBH overall it's anybody's guess ATM.

Personally been wondering whether a thermobaric warhead could deliver enough overpressure to do the job...don't know...

The single truck is, I agree a bit of an outlier, given properly built reinforced concrete structures are f..hard to drop...but then again as has been pointed out elsewhere this is a ?Russian built structure then for example how much rebar went into the structure and how much was diverted to another job 🤔 ?

With regard to a truck there is also quite righty the issue of whether suicide tactics would be used.

It's basically a dunno for me other than I'd be pretty sure it wasn't a handful of Special forces types with back packs full of conventional explosives.

State Duma are calling it a declaration of war

Thomas C Theinor at noclador
Truck bomb people: explain how Ukraine supposedly managed to transport tons of explosives to russia and then drive that through Kuban and onto the Kerch bridge?

Alistair Cunningham at Cunningham_uk
I believe you can see a boat or similar under the bridge. That's currently the most convincing argument to me.

Iyad el-baghdadi at iyaelbaghdadi
This is more convincing, given not only the waves but also the target, the bridge pylons

I'm firmly team boat drone. Not team suicide truck packed with explosives coming from Russia.

Fuat suggested it was a bomb on the train