Ukraine

[Nicholas Carey]

A little video.

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1578605975979708416

[StevenBauer]

A little birthday present for Vlad. So thoughtful.

[Nicholas Carey]

It seems to have been a truck that blew up on the bridge, collapsing the roadway and lighting up the fuel train.

https://www.dw.com/en/russia-ukraine...say/a-63376484

Careless smoking on the part of the truck driver, I'm thinking probably tossed a butt out of the window.

[skuthorp]

I presume the links across the peninsula neck via Armianask and Chonhar are still open?

[epoxyboy]

It seems to have been a truck that blew up on the bridge, collapsing the roadway and lighting up the fuel train.

https://www.dw.com/en/russia-ukraine...say/a-63376484

Careless smoking on the part of the truck driver, I'm thinking probably tossed a butt out of the window.

Not totally convinced about that. I've seen other video that looks like more than one span has gone, and the fuel tanker train being on the rail bridge at that exact time and place? That is drawing a very long bow to be happy coincidence. Not impossible, but up there with winning some $50 million jackpot lottery.

Pete

[Lew Barrett]

Did you do so out loud and in public ?? If not, it means nada.

Oh my. So righteous, so indignant. In your mind only your objections hold water. Where were you when so many of us refused to serve in Vietnam and then had to live with the consequences? Was that one or two tours in Vietnam? I reckon a guy would know if he served one or two, cause it seems it would make a difference.

[skuthorp]

Yeah, I thought nice placement and timing, and likely some engineering knowledge as well.

[skuthorp]

Re sandy: if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and acts like a duck then it's probably a……………………
(fill in the appropriate word here)

[Lew Barrett]

About that bridge. The Antonovsky bridge has been pummeled by HIMARS for months and still stands, albeit considerably weakened. The Crimean bridge collapsed after this single admittedly potent incident. Corruption apparently runs incredibly deep in the culture. Bridges are usually the hardest bits of infrastructure to destroy.

[epoxyboy]

Hoo boy. Definitely not one truck blowing up. Video - the train fire is now out, there are multiple spans of the road in the water.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RussiaUkrai...t=share_button

Pete

[gypsie]

Wow! What a development!

That is interesting Lew.

it was built very quickly, and it appears to have significant spans.
I wonder was it built very close to its minimum tolerances?

[birlinn]

Putin and his mate Sandy will blame the US of course.
Would like to have been a fly on the wall when Putin got the news. He will not be a happy bunny- the worry is how will he respond?
A very neat bit of sabotage, and from the videos I doubt it was caused by a truck detonating or an air strike.

[gypsie]

Looks like the train has multiple fires.
I wonder what the heat has done to the structural integrity of the train line?
Looks like one of the roads is intact.

Russian tourists in Crimea will get itchy feet.

[WX]

Did you do so out loud and in public ?? If not, it means nada.

I did, out loud, and in public!
I also opposed the invasion of Afghanistan.

[birlinn]

Not sure if that intact road is safe though- one pic I saw seemed to show about half of its support was missing at one of the piers.

[WX]

[gypsie]

Head of Ukraine National Security posted video of the bridge with Marilyn Monroe singing happy birthday mr President. Putin was 70 on Friday.

https://twitter.com/OleksiyDanilov/s...Pk3qUM8PeGrV6w

[epoxyboy]

Security camera footage of the explosion. It looks like the train was stationary.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RussiaUkrai...t=share_button

Pete

[gypsie]

Not sure if that intact road is safe though- one pic I saw seemed to show about half of its support was missing at one of the piers.

Reuters reporting one lane intact. But early days yet.

[gypsie]

Security camera footage of the explosion. It looks like the train was stationary.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RussiaUkrai...t=share_button

Pete

No obvious sign of anything flying into the bridge.
Does it look like a truck exploded to anyone else?

[mizzenman]

Now who was smoking on that bridge? I told you not to!

[birlinn]

Looks like several charges placed on the supports under the motorway, plus charges to the railway bridge, all detonated simultaneously.

[skuthorp]

Our news showed dash cam footage of the explosion, and at least one car blew up in the aftermath.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

I wonder if the railway fire burned hot enough to affect the steel structure?

Shocking carelessness with matches

[gypsie]

The argument for vaping just got stronger.

[SKIP KILPATRICK]

Head of Ukraine National Security posted video of the bridge with Marilyn Monroe singing happy birthday mr President. Putin was 70 on Friday.

https://twitter.com/OleksiyDanilov/s...Pk3qUM8PeGrV6w

Made my day!

[Rumars]

The US foreign policy Blob treats most of the world as pawns most of the time.

Sandtown, please be so kind and answer me this questions:

1. If US security guarantees are not worth the paper they are written on, what's to stop anybody involved from going nuclear on their own?
2. If Nato had not expanded to the East, would there be a third military alliance in Europe?
3. Without Nato wich of the former Eastern Bloc countries would be nuclear powers today?

[Gerarddm]

Kablooie! Now for some follow up visits from Mr. HIMARS.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Kablooie! Now for some follow up visits from Mr. HIMARS.

I don’t think the bridge is in HIMARS range. (Yet…).

[Tom Hunter]

Putin will feel compelled to do something after this attack on the bridge. I'm not sure what.

If the rail bridge is damaged and unusable that is a big problem for Russian supplies on the Kherson front.

At a minimum this is a huge psychological win for Ukraine. It may be a big logistics win for them as well.

Russia is having a major defeat every few days now. I'm not sure there is much they can do to reverse this or create the impression that they might win some how. I believe Putin's strategy was based on two more or less sound ideas. Calling up a lot of troops would slow the speed of Ukrainian victory and more or less freeze the war in place. Grinding the war on into the winter will cause a lot of pain in Europe and the Europeans will start pushing for a peace deal. I hope this will not work for Putin, but I can see how it could.

Now he is taking such large and visible losses that I am not sure his strategy can work. It's a strategy that works if it looks like the war is a stalemate, but it does not work as well if Ukraine is racking up a major victory every few days.

[SKIP KILPATRICK]

The planning to deliver that much explosive power at the same time a train full of fuel was on the other span is impressive.

Or was it the train that blew up first? If it was a truck bomb it appears to have been traveling from Russia into Crimea. Who could get together that much fertilizer without being caught?

[birlinn]

YouTube have demonetarised Denys Davidov's blog from Ukraine. As he could no longer work as an airline pilot, it was his only real source of income.
Why? it was a good place to get an accurate picture of the war.
Pity they don't pull some of the real fake news posts - one guy has been making money with "Michael Schumacher Dead" for months. I bet Michael's family are happy about that.

[George.]

So, bridge gone. Conditions set for that left hook through Zaporizhzhia?

[Decourcy]

YouTube have demonetarised Denys Davidov's blog from Ukraine. As he could no longer work as an airline pilot, it was his only real source of income.
Why? it was a good place to get an accurate picture of the war.
Pity they don't pull some of the real fake news posts - one guy has been making money with "Michael Schumacher Dead" for months. I bet Michael's family are happy about that.

You tube is bad for that. He should get a patreon account. Lots of people, I am sure, would support his site

[Lew Barrett]

Wow! What a development!

That is interesting Lew.

it was built very quickly, and it appears to have significant spans.
I wonder was it built very close to its minimum tolerances?

Since I wrote that late last night I’ve had second thoughts about blaming the collapse just on construction quality. Obviously a large explosion had something to do with it! But it is true that major bridges are extremely difficult to bring down. It’s easier to do if one can plant explosives exactly at the weak spots but it takes huge amounts of high explosives even in that case. A truck rolling on the road surface will require extremely large charges to have an effect. Obviously this was a very well considered attack requiring a lot of skill, a lot of explosives and good timing to wreck such devastation on a structure like the Kerch. Unless some sort of shaped/focused charge was employed, a truck sitting on the road surface would require an absolutely tremendous charge to have such an effect as the force of the explosion would be expected to be somewhat less efficient than charges that are strategically placed. Whoever designed this attack either got extremely lucky or was extremely skilled. A very professional job then as by their nature bridges are open structures that tend to dissipate rather than focus the forces involved. Even so, there may be more than just reasonable doubt that Russian construction practice is likely as highly compromised as their military preparedness.

As the old Communist saw used to go, “we pretend to work and you pretend to pay us”. But maybe it was just what it looked like. A huge badda boom. Hard to say from our perspective at the moment. Along with everything else, Russia’s security services are sub par, another conclusion we can draw from all this.