Ukraine War: Why is Kyiv continuing to attack the Kerch bridge?

now good to see you Sean any developments today what's happening well as you've said the ukrainians the Russians are exchanging um sort of uh cruise missiles and particularly drone attacks but the most recent news that came out Russian shelling across uh cross near Union house Sun that's killed seven people including tragically a young baby and interestingly there's been a Russian warship down in the Black Sea that's been firing on one of the civilian cargo vessels um trying to stop it the reports suggests that there's no casualties they're no damage to the ship and it carried on its way but it's apparently up in uh in Ukraine now um but all of that in a way is a side show to the main effort here which is the um the fighting in the front line and it seems to be distilling out into three distinct areas at the moment up in the Don Basque particularly these are khaki little settlement called kubiansk the Russians are making are on the front foot there they're actually taking territory despite this is meant to be the Ukraine's counter-offensive and likewise in the south in back moot there the Russians have reinforced the area and stopped the Ukrainian Advance all of that's consistent with the Russians appearing to want still wanting to take the donbass the next area is the east of zaparita which is where the main defenses are that the ukrainians are pushing hard trying to push there have been reports of Ukraine makes some sort of limited breakthroughs but there's no evidence of anything significant as yet and the final area of interest of the war is around the danipra river you remember the karkovka dam blue which obviously protected the Russian the Western flank but of course it is the summer gradually all the mud's dried out and that now appears to be another area and the Ukraine's reported to have made their way across that River if that is true and if they're able to build on that that will cause the Russian some real headache down on the Eastern side of the Juniper there what's happened at the Kirch Bridge that's very important is it because it links Russia to Crimea which of course Russia annexed back in 2014. yeah literally yesterday there were reports though Russia claimed that there were two missile attacks two drone attacks on the bridge at the time there was a a bunch of smoke shown as it's shown here it's not entirely clear what damage was done because although smoke you think there's no smoke without fire in reality the Russians use smoke to obfuscate the bridge because that way it camouflages it should there be drones that are trying to uh to Target the bridge so it's not entirely clear it's not the first time though that the ukrainians have targeted the bridge back in October last year you remember there was this huge explosion um that took out and it's still not clear now what what actually caused this but you can see the devastation there that they're significantly uh damaged the bridge and that was not back in action until earlier on this year both the rail section and the road section and then of course it came back into use earlier this year then was re-attacked by cranes back in July and this time it was only the road section that was damaged and only about half of that road section as we can see here there's a big chunk taken out of it it's been regularly attacked President Putin took a personal interest in building this bridge it was his company that built it and he drove his personal car across it to open it so this will be personally damaging to Beauty yeah bridge by Pooch and does that mean that the ukrainians are going to continue their focus on this bridge almost certainly but I think this is part of a much bigger play here the Russian Logistics are facing a huge challenge at the moment trying to support the front line all the way across Ukraine just by way of example you know the Russians are using half a million kilograms of artillery shells every single day and therefore they've got to resupply now one of the roots of resupply is across the north there through Russian occupied Ukraine it's long it's dangerous that's quite difficult the second way is by a maritime through the the um the Crimean report of Sebastopol but that's why the ukraines are targeted two of the Black Sea Fleet vessels if you remember they were severely damaged in Port Third Way is to actually land route via the Kirch Bridge the Kirch Bridge as you say will be regularly targeted and then if you take those supplies up from Crimea into Ukraine there's only three arterial roads to the north of Crimea the ukrainians have targeted the Eastern won the chongup bridge and that's forced the Russians to to go out the farther side of Ukraine all of which is making life really difficult for a Russian Logistics sport it's a lot easier for them to support across in the Don Bast than is over here and that's probably why the ukrainians have opened up the front across the uh the deeper River just putting even more pressure on Russia but bottom line is this is all about taking territory for a Ukraine so far despite lots of fighting week nine of the counter-offensive still no evidence of a significant Breakthrough by Ukraine

Channel: Sky News

Views: 685,525

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Id: nPUtiQs9crg

Length: 4min 28sec (268 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 13 2023