Occupants transport military equipment to Crimea by ferries and the Kerch Bridge

The Kerch ferry crossing continues to work for the military logistics of the occupiers even without rail ferries.

Eskender Bariiev, Chairman of the Board of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, member of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, said this in an interview with Channel 24.

He noted that the occupiers are still transporting major military equipment using ferries and the Kerch Bridge.

Bariiev added that although Russian propaganda at the international level has always claimed that the Kerch Bridge is supposedly only a civilian object, it is very important for the invaders to constantly transport military equipment and personnel to the territory of Crimea. Eskender Bariiev noted that the Kerch Bridge is a direct link to Russia's Southern Military District, which provides Crimea with all the necessary weapons.

According to him, the occupiers are transferring their military equipment from the peninsula to the south of Ukraine to fight at the front.

"When Ukraine destroys these logistics facilities that the Russians have been building for 10 years, it will be a very important step for Crimea to return to Ukraine," Bariev said.

At the same time, the Kerch bridge is hardly used for military logistics, and the effect of its destruction will not be the same now.

Ukrainian Navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk said this in an interview with RBC-Ukraine.

According to him, this bridge carries less than a quarter of the total load, and the rest goes through the ferry crossing, which was recently attacked.

"Therefore, this bridge no longer has such a tactical and strategic importance after the damage it received as a result of a joint operation by the SBU and the Navy with a drone attack," Pletenchuk said.

The damaged ferry. Photo: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

Last week, it was reported that footage from June 8 showed that Russia had begun transporting fuel across the Kerch Strait via a railroad bridge. Prior to that, the spokesman for the Southern Operational Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Dmytro Pletenchuk, said that the Russian authorities had not been transporting fuel across the Kerch Strait since March 2024 because of the threat of a Ukrainian strike on the bridge during the passage of fuel transport, which could catch fire and possibly destroy the bridge.

Earlier, the Ukrainian Defense Forces put out of action the ferries of the Kerch ferry crossing in the occupied Ukrainian Crimea, which were running to the port of Kavkaz and were used for the aggressor's military logistics.

Володимир Шкаєв