Traffic on the single bridge that links Russia to Moscow-annexed Crimea and serves as a key supply route for the Kremlin’s forces in the war with Ukraine came to a standstill on Monday after one of its sections was blown up, killing a couple and wounding their daughter.
The RBC Ukraine news agency reported that explosions were heard on the bridge, with Russian military bloggers reporting two strikes.
RBC Ukraine and another Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda said the attack was planned jointly by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Ukrainian navy, and involved sea drones.
Honey, how about we spice our family vacation up this year and go to a drought stricken stolen land near an active war zone?
San Diego is nice this time of year.
The war zones are the homeless colonies.
I was thinking Tijuana, but that might work too.
Comic con is starting soon… May want to wait for that to be done.
Let’s drive over a military asset during a war! I wish no harm to any civilians but driving over this bridge isn’t like chilling in a cafe in a city. You need to be either stupid or accepting of the risk to drive over this bridge.
At this point, any Russian families remaining in Crimea really should leave for their own safety. They know full well they live on stolen land.
Many of them moved there as active contributors to the genocide in that region.
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True, as does Israel.
What? Do you have anything that shows the demographics significantly changed at all? The population was 76% russian in 2014 before Russia took it. You have data that shows that significantly increased?
No it was at 67.9%, up from 60.4% in 2001 down from 67% in 1989. Up from 6.6% in 1850 when Russification really started. Also note the suspicious absence of Tatars during the times of the Soviet Union and their return afterwards. And TBH I trust those censuses 2014 onwards about as much as I trust Russian referenda.
Also, “people speak Russian at home” is not, by a long shot, the same thing as “want to be part of Russia” much less “want to live under <currenttsar>'s boot” or “want to suffer yet another Holodomor”. Crimea had a referendum just as the rest of Ukraine did and it didn’t want to be part of Russia by a good margin. The question of “part of Ukraine or independent” was more split, but that turned towards “part of Ukraine” as Ukraine failed to treat Crimea badly and independence would be difficult for such a small country in such an exposed situation.
And TBH I trust those censuses 2014 onwards about as much as I trust Russian referenda.
Then just speak to some people physically in Crimea? You’re on the internet it’s not difficult to seek out and have conversations with people in different places in the world.
but that turned towards “part of Ukraine” as Ukraine failed to treat Crimea badly and independence would be difficult for such a small country in such an exposed situation.
Ukraine did treat Crimea badly though? Are you completely unaware of the political turmoil in Ukraine prior to any of this? Increasing ethnic persecution against Russians and finally banning the russian language is what started the separatism in these regions.
Then just speak to some people physically in Crimea? You’re on the internet it’s not difficult to seek out and have conversations with people in different places in the world.
Of course. Because that’s totally not something the FSB would do to sniff out partisans and shit. There’s a war going on in case you haven’t noticed and truth is always its first victim.
Increasing ethnic persecution against Russians and finally banning the russian language is what started the separatism in these regions.
Neither was there prosecution nor was the Russian language banned. The Ukrainian army largely operates in Russian, FFS.
I suggest you have a good look at the reliability of whatever place you get your information from.
It’s Russian propaganda, we know where they get their information from.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2014-010539_EN.html
This was put to the EU at the time by a greek parliamentarian that cared about what would happen to greeks in the region. But refers to the law change I am talking about which affected several other ethnic groups.
Of course. Because that’s totally not something the FSB would do to sniff out partisans and shit. There’s a war going on in case you haven’t noticed and truth is always its first victim.
This is just closed mindedness. You refuse to take on any new information, you have made up your mind what the situation is and utterly refuse to even consider listening to anyone with first hand experience.
Neither was there prosecution nor was the Russian language banned. The Ukrainian army largely operates in Russian, FFS.
No. This is just factually incorrect. The flashpoint that started the separatism was the repeal of the language laws that made Russian (and many others) one of the many state languages in these regions (majority russian ethnicity regions). This occurred in 2014 immediately following the Maidan coup/revolution.
This law change by the new far right bandera supporting government was the final straw in a long line of things that had led up to it, and was what created popular support for violent separatism among the local populations. Many people saw it as existentially important to separate themselves from Ukraine as they believed the Bandera supporters sought to kill or deport them all.
The flashpoint that started the separatism was the repeal of the language laws that made Russian (and many others) one of the many state languages in these regions (majority russian ethnicity regions).
What you’re citing there is a question to the Commission, not a research paper. The guy posing that question? A Greek Nazi, becoming MEP on a Golden Dawn ticket. Here’s the answer:
The Commission is not aware of any ban on use of minority languages in Ukraine. In February 2014, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted a law, revoking the language policy law of 2012, which has however been effectively vetoed by the then Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov, and therefore has not entered into force.
The law adopted in 2012, giving the local and regional authorities the right to determine regional languages in addition to Ukrainian for contacts with public bodies, has been largely positively assessed by the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe in its opinion. At the same time, the opinion noted: ‘the question remains whether, having regard to the specific situation in Ukraine, there are sufficient guarantees, in the current Draft Law, for the consolidation of the Ukrainian language as the sole State language, and of the role it has to play in the Ukrainian multilinguistic society.’
Yes, the Ukrainian government has been actively trying to make Ukrainian the de facto, not just de jure, lingua franca of Ukraine, to halt secondary effects of Russification.
I’m not even going to address anything else you said. A Tankie relying on hallucinations of a Nazi to make points, how fucking classic.
Learn some research skills and source criticism and then maybe you’ll be able to contribute to discussions.
There is a loooong road from “has political turmoil” to “wants to be part of Russia.”
Florida has political turmoil. Doesn’t mean they want to be part of Spain because some people there speak Spanish.
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We’ll take it. The land is valuable, and the current residents will voluntarily flee to the rest of the USA, horrorified by our free healthcare.
No thank you, we don’t want it anymore. No takesy backsies.
Sure. But I assure you that when russian ethnicity people read twitter and see nafo and other morons (like half this comment section) saying all russians should die blah blah blah it only ends up pushing them to russia for safety. Even Navalny’s people who I despise say this:
Like, what do you people expect the russians in Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk to think exactly when they read half the shit they’ve seen from libs on Twitter, reddit, etc etc who have all behaved indistinguishably from fascists in their bloodthirsty calls for russian blood? They see it as attacks on themselves, not the russian army, not putin, they see it as ethnic threats and it has pushed fencesitting russians with family in both ukraine and russia (about half are mixed families) over to the russian side because they just don’t feel the west can be trusted. They see them as wanting all russians dead, which you can hardly blame them for with all the behaviour you’ve surely seen online.
People are mean on the Internet? People are also mad at Russia because they’ve invaded a neighbor. People were calling out “death to America” for invading Iraq. It’s how the world works.
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Crimea is 76% russian. It was almost 70% russian before 2014 and it is around 76% russian today. Almost all of these people lived there already.
Russian speaking != Russian. A majority in Crimea voted for independence from Russia in 1991 and that desire for independence from Russia did not lessen between 1991 and 2014 when Russia’s imperial war of conquest against Ukraine began.
A majority of Russians rose up in opposition against the Ukrainian government during the Ukrainian revolution in support of Russian annexation. You can’t just ignore that a large number of people in Crimea were onboard with annexation.
Certainly can, and will! Nothing justifies another country just annexing that territory. Nothing. No amount of you talking will justify it. No number of people there who speak Russian justify it. There is no justification.
So, you don’t care about the people or how they feel about anything? So when the people in Crimea felt they were being treated unfairly by the Ukrainian government, they should’ve just put up with it instead of standing up for themselves? With that attitude, the US would still be a British territory.
You would’ve sided with the whiskey producers in the whiskey rebellion.
Then do it democratically through referendums. An illegal war is inexcusable. Claiming land is yours because there are people from your country there is textbook fascist strategy.
To offer an example, this was Hitler’s basis for invading and annexing the Sudetenland, part of what was then Czechoslovakia.
I’m going to quote this next year when Xi annexes Sakalin.
Russia has been too large for too long, it should have been split into a dozen separate countries centuries ago.
And they just magically had Russian military uniforms and heavy equipment…
Sure. But that doesn’t really change the census data much.
This applies to Donetsk and Luhansk too. All three of these regions were ethnic majority Russian, and the separatism kicked off when the Maidan government banned the Russian language in official government usage (schools, local institutions etc).
So you’re saying that Italy ought to annex New Jersey?
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As others have pointed out, Crimea is not 82% Russian. The majority of the populace speaks Russian, but a shared language does not indicate a shared culture. They don’t want to be part of Russia, and were illegally invaded.
Crimea wasn’t “invaded”. Russia was already there as it leased the port and officially managed it for military use already. That’s why there was no fighting. They already ran the checkpoints, they already were the entire military presence in the region. The changeover from “this is Ukraine” to “this is Russia now” was entirely the signing of papers and changed absolutely nothing about the presence in the region or the average day to day. They certainly took it over, but to say it was invaded is somewhat misleading, more of a “we’ve decided that this is ours now”.
This is a gross and flagrant distortion of events in Crimea leading up to the illegal annexation. It leaves out the fact that the operation of the checkpoints was still subject to Ukrainian governmental oversight, the fact that prior to the take-over, Russia illegally brought soldiers in unmarked uniforms over the border (the “little green men”), and the fact that the “changeover” was far from violence-free, let alone just a “signing of papers.”
The denial of reality going on here is absurd. Pre 2014 I know they operated the checkpoints because I went to Crimea for 2 weeks in 2009. I’m not saying that there wasn’t also fuckery involved but denying the reality of events is nonsensical. There is even a vice documentary that shows just how casual the transition was. It’s extremely painful discussing these topics with people online whose only understanding of these regions comes through the lens of this war.
I never said Russia didn’t operate the checkpoints. But prior to 2014, Crimea was indisputably Ukrainian territory, and Russia operated security checkpoints inside Ukraine at Ukraine’s discretion.
No one is claiming that the annexation of Crimea involved violence at the scale of the current war, but it was not non-violent, either. Characterizing it as just “signing of papers” is false.
It’s extremely painful discussing these topics with people online whose only understanding of these regions comes through the lens of this war.
What other lens should we look at the annexation through? It was clearly the early stages of this war.
I’m not saying it wasn’t Ukrainian territory. I’m saying that the presence there was 100% russian military because it was functionally operated as their military port.
This is precisely why there was no battle over it, no deaths, no nothing. Just “this is russia now” and continued operation of it as they always had but with different flags.
What other lens should we look at the annexation through? It was clearly the early stages of this war.
I’d much prefer a non-war lens of the place and how cool it is. Most people in america hadn’t even heard of it until the annexation, it’s very unfortunate.
I don’t think calling it the early stages of this war is quite accurate but it’s not really that important and kinda gets into unnecessary semantics. The war probably wouldn’t be happening if the Minsk agreement had been kept. Russia were never going to let Crimea go because they needed it as a military port but they avoided Donetsk and Luhansk up until the Minsk agreement failed. If they had taken these regions in 2014 it would have been a breeze for them as Ukraine had no military to speak of, which is why the civil war was fought by the nazi volunteer batallions (azov, right sector, etc etc). Ukraine’s military was ramped up between 2014 and 2021. They did not really have much of anything until the 2016 Stategic Defense Bulletin followed by the State Program for the Development of the Armed Forces (2017-2020). In 2014 the military was only 90k active personnel with over half being civilian staff.
This is an ethnic argument, further pointing to the idea that you are making distinctly fascist points in this thread.
It is impossible to talk about a genocide without talking about ethnicity. Stop being so pigheaded. I’m going to block you now.
Oh my the tankies don’t like this at all.
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If it weren’t for Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenaries staging a mutiny against the Russian military, I would have cast serious doubt on Ukraine’s counteroffensive succeeding. Regardless of what you think about the competency of the Russian armed forces, it can’t be denied that Wagner are one of their few effective units in force.
Ukraine has remained boldly united in the face of a long and a bloody war on their own doorstep, whereas we’ve seen deteriorating Russian morale, both within the country’s borders and on the frontlines.
At this rate I think that Zelenskyy will retake Crimea and the Donbas within months.
What is with the Prigozhin/Wagner mutiny anyway? Never heard anything after.
It died when Belarus intervened and brokered a compromise between the Wagner group and Putin. Still unfolding so we still don’t know the full story. Here’s a summary from Business Insider.
My guess is he got paid off to back down. Putin has a lot of money and probably offered him safety in Belarus as well as a huge chunk of change for him and his troops.
It’s not exactly about money, Prigozhin has full control over the mercenary company Konkord, which deals in “authoritarian support” and over the years amassed more money and influence then I can even imagine.
I’ve never heard of a super rich person who didn’t want more money
Fuck I blocked one troll and this entire thread literally decreased in size by more than half.
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Yeah, he also has been a mod here until yesterday for like a day or so and got a couple of posts removed. I tell you, some modlogs are a wild read.
With this bridge being the only link between Russian occupied Crimea and the Russian mainland, we can look forward to a loooooooot more attacks of this kind.
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What happened? Good thing happened.
In pictures only one road span seems to be damaged. That would elave the other road with 2 lines and railroad with 2 lines still available. Could this really have an effect on the supply efforts beyond halving the maximum throughput? I don’t imagine the bridge is constantly being used at maximum capacity.
I guess the whole thing could be structurally unsound now without it being visible from these photos.
I guess we’ll just wait and see if Russians actually use it.
It didn’t need to be blown up to be structurally unsound, it was already. The bridge was a well known rush job that was built against the advice of several engineers but Putin’s hubris knows no bounds.
I believe the bridge is to be totally closed to car traffic for at least a month but that trains work.
I heard the naval drone attached from inside the Azov Sea which shows Ukraine has done something very unexpected. How did the front get to the north side of the bridge?
if you look at the photos and map, you’ll see that the span dropped was the one in the middle, that is the one carrying traffic from crimea to krasnodar. it’s pretty unusual either way, whether drones got there from south or north
I believe the reasoning is that this is the only bridge into and out of Crimea from the Russian side.
Lemmingrad wank moderated community. I’m out.
Edit: it appeara the problem has been rectified lol
For real. These tankies running lemmy are going to kill it in its crib.
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