The Ukrainian Security Service told local media that it and the Navy carried out the attack using surface drones. Sevastopol Harbor and the Kerch Road Bridge highlight the changing warfare at sea, the vulnerability of Crimea, and the ugly truth about high-stakes remote strikes.
Officially, Ukraine has been reserved about attacks on Russian territory, with state officials limiting themselves to prodding and winking rather than openly taking responsibility.
But the SBU, Ukraine's security service, told local media that it and the Ukrainian Navy carried out attack using surface drones.
There are clear footage of attacks using maritime drones.
< p>But images of previous attacks by Ukrainian maritime drones give us a rough idea of what they look like, and how their designers combined modern navigation technology with maritime sports gear and old-fashioned bomb-making.
The drones so far we've seen that they look like fast boats with a sharp nose about 5.5 meters long.
Toward the bow, on a small tower, there is a rotating camera. Further aft, another turret contains what appears to be a communications array used to control what could be a Starlink terminal.
Ukraine United 24 maritime drone
The engine also appears to be of non-military origin: likely a gasoline-powered water cannon manufactured by the Canadian firm Sea Doo, a manufacturer of civilian jet skis.
The only non-commercial military-grade kit is two pressure detonators taken from the Soviet FAB-500 antenna . bomb.
Unmanned bombers are nothing new. Sir Francis Drake sent fireships against the Spanish Armada in 1588.
Western navies, particularly the Royal Navy and the US Navy, have been thinking about fending off fast-moving small boats since an al-Qaeda suicide bomber on a speedboat attacked the USS Cole in 2000.
But modern drone technology has kept costs down and means the navy doesn't need suicide navigators to get close to their targets.
When about half a dozen Ukrainian bombers attacked a stationed anchored in the Sevastopol harbor of the Black Sea Fleet, some naval experts hailed the turning point in the naval war.
No Russian ships were sunk, but at least two were damaged, one apparently seriously, and by infiltrating the well-defended harbor entrance of Sevastopol Bay, the drones proved that a new and serious threat had emerged in the Black Sea.
Monday morning's attack shows that the threat remains serious and continues to evolve. Other navies will study it closely.
The Kerch Bridge is one of Russia's main vulnerabilities.
Completed in 2018, it has become both a major engineering achievement and a symbol of Vladimir Putin's conquests. Crimea four years earlier.
It also eased the pressure on the overloaded ferry, which was the only other direct route from the Russian mainland.
Now it is a critical bottleneck in the logistics network supplying Russian troops on the south of Ukraine. And it's hard to defend.
The Ukrainians first attacked him in October last year, blowing up a truck bomb that blew a hole in the road and set fire to a train on a nearby section of the railway. The bridge has been out of service for weeks.
Monday's attack shows that despite Russia's best efforts, the 12-mile bridge is difficult to defend.
The Kerch Bridge is one of Russia's major vulnerabilities and is difficult to defend. Photo: Reuters
It seems that an undamaged section of the railway is more important from a military point of view than a damaged section of the road, but re-closing the bridge will bring inevitable pressure. against troops trying to contain the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Russian authorities have already diverted the flow of tourists through the “new territories” of occupied Ukraine, with obvious risks for both the civilian population and military logistics. There were reports of heavy traffic on Monday afternoon.
Finally, it highlights the uncomfortable moral compromises involved in waging any war, but especially high-stakes operations behind enemy lines.
Russian authorities say a civilian couple was killed and their 14-year-old daughter injured in an alleged drone strike as the family was driving across the bridge.
The October truck bombing that killed five people, including the truck driver, raises trickier ethical questions. Was the driver a voluntary participant? If so, is a suicide attack ever acceptable? If not, is there any justification for tricking a civilian into carrying a bomb?
The Kerch Bridge is a legitimate military target. Some collateral damage is inevitable in an all-out war for national survival. And these deaths are nothing compared to the well-documented and clearly deliberate atrocities committed by Russia during the war.
But war is always a murky, dirty business, no matter which side you are on. There is no point in pretending otherwise.
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