Russia no longer using Crimea’s Kerch Bridge to supply troops in Ukraine, satellite images show

Russia is relying far more on overland routes in annexed eastern Ukraine to supply its military than on Crimea’s Kerch Bridge, which Ukraine has repeatedly targeted since the war began, new satellite images show.

The bridge, which Russia built after annexing Crimea in 2014, is seeing almost “zero traffic” and may therefore no longer represent an effective military target for Ukraine’s ammunition-strapped troops, according to analysts at Molfar, Ukraine’s biggest private open-source intelligence, or OSINT, agency.

Satellite images taken by Maxar, which have been analysed by Molfar, show almost no military freight trains have used the bridge’s rail line in over three months. In that period, just a single Russian freight train, carrying around 55 fuel cars, was seen crossing the bridge, on February 29.

There was no movement involving Russian military assets on the bridge at all in March or April, according to Molfar. The OSINT agency, based in Dnipro in Ukraine, used a combination of Maxar’s images, railcar counts and cargo identification for its analysis.

Russia’s use of the bridge has gone down significantly since Ukraine attacked it with explosive sea drones on July 17, 2023, and blew up a section of the road and the rail line, the analysis noted.

After the attack, which killed a couple and injured their daughter, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky called the Kerch Bridge a “legitimate military target”, claiming that, by connecting Russia to Crimea, it was “bringing war, not peace” and had to be neutralised.

“This is the route used to feed the war with ammunition and this is being done on a daily basis,” he said. “And it militarises the Crimean peninsula.”

Ukraine had earlier attacked the bridge, which spans 19km, by detonating an explosives-laden truck on it. That attack, in October 2022, killed four people.

In August 2023, Kyiv fired three missiles aimed at bringing down the bridge but they were intercepted by Russia.

The closure of the bridge at the beginning of this year mirrors the aftermath of last year’s attack, with satellite images showing there was no major train movement on it in July or August.

Before the July 17 attack, Russia was operating more than 40 trains carrying weapons across the bridge every day, according to Vasyl Maliuk, head of Ukraine’s security service.

Traffic is now down to just four passenger trains and a single general goods freight train a day, said Mr Maliuk.

(© The Independent)

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