The attack on the Crimean bridge on July 17 will have a significant and lasting impact on Russian military logistics. The flow of tourists fleeing the occupied peninsula will block Russia from sending reinforcements to southern Ukraine in the midst of a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Meanwhile, Russian authorities are busy mitigating the effects of the bombings rather than using the incident to launch massive information attacks with rhetorical intonations of war. This was pointed out by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

It is noted that the Kremlin has accused the Ukrainian security services of launching a surface drone strike on the bridge over the Kerch Strait between Russia and temporarily occupied Crimea on Monday morning. The footage shows that one span of the highway part of the bridge collapsed, while the other was damaged but held steady.

The Russian Ministry of Transportation said the strikes allegedly did not damage either the railroad bridge or the supports of the road bridge, and rail traffic there resumed a few hours after the strike.

At the same time, the occupation "authorities" of Crimea diverted heavy civilian traffic to Russia through the captured territories of southern Ukraine. Russian publicks complained about significant traffic jams in the Dzhankoysky district of the peninsula and the temporarily occupied part of the Kherson region in the direction of Melitopol.

"Tourists fleeing Crimea have exacerbated traffic problems and likely impeded Russian logistics from the peninsula to the rear areas of Zaporizhzhya and Kherson regions. "The occupation 'authorities' have asked civilians to consider alternative evacuation routes to alleviate pressing traffic problems," the ISW summary said.

Analysts believe that the Russian government's failure to bring society into a wartime state will have a significant impact on the logistics of the Russian Armed Forces. After all, the Kerch Strait bridge runs along one of the two land communications routes supplying the southern grouping of Russian troops, while the other route leads through the occupied Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions.

"This logistical route is now the only point of failure for supplying the large number of mechanized Russian forces in southern Ukraine needed to repel Ukrainian counteroffensives. Russian and occupation officials nevertheless continued to promote occupied Crimea as a tourist destination, encouraging Russians to travel through the war zone rather than advising them to avoid it, as a responsible government would have done," ISW emphasized.

It added that the occupation "authorities" had recently tried their best to alleviate traffic problems only because of the increase in Russian tourism across the Crimean bridge. Dictator Vladimir Putin even ordered the use of military means to ferry tourists across the strait.

According to analysts, Russian logistics in southern Ukraine will suffer in the short to medium term, likely exacerbating recent serious complaints by propagandists about the inadequacy of Russian supply fulfillment. In particular, complaints by the former commander of the 58th Combined Arms Army (South Military District), Major General Ivan Popov, about the Russian military command's mistreatment of occupants "defending" against the Ukrainian counteroffensive in southern Ukraine have caused great outrage in the Russian media space.

Many of Popov's words indicated that the 58th Combined Arms Army and likely other Russian formations stationed in the Zaporizhzhya region were suffering from a supply shortage that would be further exacerbated if the flow of tourists and other civilians slowed down logistical routes in Crimea supporting the occupation forces in southern Ukraine.

"Further support problems for this group and complaints emerging in the Russian media space are likely to cause further outrage from the Russian ultranationalist community and undermine the credibility of the Russian Ministry of Defense," ISW assessed the implications of the Crimean bridge attack.

As reported by OBOZREVATEL, in Russia recognized that the attack on July 17 completely destroyed the automotive part of the Crimean bridge, where one span structure cannot be restored. We are talking about the lane on which transport was moving in the direction of Taman (Krasnodar region of the Russian Federation) - the Russian Federation promised to replace it.

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