Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Let there be snark.

Bark louder, little dog.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Keep the Immigrants and deport the fascists!

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Republicans do not trust women.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 226: What Logistics Doing?

War for Ukraine Day 226: What Logistics Doing?

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Apparently it’s going boom!

We’ll get to the earth shattering kaboom on the Kerch Bridge in a bit, but let’s start, as per tradition, with President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump:

Dear Ukrainians!

Today was a good and mostly sunny day on the territory of our state. It was about 20 degrees and sunny in large parts of the country.

Unfortunately, it was cloudy in Crimea. Although it is also warm. But no matter what the clouds are, Ukrainians know what to do. And they know that our future is sunny.

This is a future without occupiers. Throughout our territory, in particular in Crimea.

If the occupiers flee while they have a chance, this will be the best option for them. If they are forced to stay, any occupier can find a way to surrender to Ukrainian captivity.

We guarantee the preservation of lives to all Russian military servicemen who voluntarily lay down their arms and surrender.
Ukraine always adheres to all international norms and conventions.

We will not leave any other options for the occupiers to rely on.

And again and again I want to thank all our citizens who are fighting and working for peace for Ukraine, for the liberation of our entire land.

This day, the movement of our military, the Security Service of Ukraine, the National Guard and all those who take part in active actions – actions in the east, actions in the south of our country – continued.

We are holding positions in Donbas, in particular in the Bakhmut direction, where now it is very, very hard, very tough fighting. Today, I would like to once again mention our soldiers from the Kholodny Yar 93rd Separate Mechanized Brigade for their courage and sustained power in this direction.

Thanks to all our anti-aircraft gunners and everyone involved in the air defense of Ukraine.

We are doing everything we can to defend Ukrainian skies, and it is one of the highest priorities for our diplomats to speed up the decision of our partners to provide Ukraine with modern and effective anti-aircraft systems in sufficient quantity.

We will definitely come to that.

In the de-occupied territories, we do not slow down the pace of reconstruction work for a single day. It’s transport, it’s electricity, it’s gas supply, it’s postal services, social benefits – wherever there is a real possibility to provide it, we provide it.

I must ask all Ukrainians in the territory where the occupiers were to be especially attentive to the mine threat.

Our explosive ordnance disposal teams, our bomb disposal engineers are working at their maximum, but after the occupiers, a very large area is contaminated with mines. Please do not ignore mine warnings, do not visit areas closed due to danger, please report any mines or unexploded ordnance found to the police, emergency services or local authorities.

And I want to add one more thing.

Lawyer’s Day is celebrated in Ukraine today. Not everyone who has a law degree works in law. But among those who still work in this field, there are people whose contribution is truly historic. Very important.

Those who investigate into the crimes of the occupiers. Those who help to restore justice, in particular by working in the field of human rights. Those who do everything so that every Russian murderer and the aggressor state itself are inevitably punished for this war. I thank all of you for this very important work!

I’m thankful to investigators, prosecutors, human rights defenders, lawyers, civil servants, and employees of public organizations.
I’m thankful to everyone who teaches law, fights for the rule of law and helps people defend their rights, freedoms and legitimate interests.

Justice for Ukraine, for Europe, for the world must and will be restored. Thanks to our indomitable, strong, conscientious and educated people.

Eternal glory to all who defend Ukraine!

Glory to Ukraine!

Here’s the British MOD’s assessment for today. Their mappers appear to have been given the day off.

Here is former NAVDEVGRU Squadron Leader Chuck Pfarrer’s most recent assessments of the situations in Izium, Kherson, and his battle damage assessment of the Kerch Bridge:

Here’s the battle damage assessment in all its glory:

 

I think a consensus is forming that this was the work of Ukrainian Special Operations Forces (SOF) most likely aided by local Ukrainian partisans in Crimea rather than a rocket attack.

I think The Kyiv Indendepent‘s defense corespondent Illia Ponomarenko’s assessment is a very good one:

And we have a winner!

Here you go:

A bit of rail logistics analysis:

We go now to live t0 Carlo Graziano for his reaction:

We’re just kidding. We love you Carlo!!!! And thank you again for covering down while I was taking off for Yom Kippur. I really appreciate it!

The fighting around Bakhmut has been hot and heavy for a while even as other locations get more coverage. The situation there is getting dire. For 2 and 1/2 months Ukrainian forces have been holding Bakhmut, but the Russians are once again pushing from east to west. The newest complication for the Ukrainian defenders is that Prigozhin has placed a company or two of his private military contractors (PMCs), more commonly referred to as the Wagner Group, and they are driving north from their position south/southeast of the town. This is part of Prigozhin’s PR campaign to set himself up as a plausible alternative power center to Putin.

The tweet translates as:

Bakhmut direction, battle near Spirne

Keep a good thought or two for Bakhmut’s citizens and defenders!

Before anyone asks, the “the Russians are using chloropicrin grenades” garbage is circulating on social media again. As we dealt with when this first emerged during the third week of September, these are K-51 CS (tear) gas grenades.

Here is  Dan Kaszeta’s original assessment thread and his most recent debunking immediately below it. Kaszeta is currently a research fellow at RUSI and was a US Army CBRN Soldier. Do click across as they’re well worth your time.

I just want to make a quick point before we conclude. At every point where one would expect Putin to do something escalatory – every time his force’s have had a major setback – he hasn’t actually escalated. He’s just reiterated that everything is going to plan while his catspaws and sycophants provide ever more incredulous explanations for what the Ukrainian military just did to Russian forces. Just keep this reality in mind when you see the policy/think tank/academic/professional tankie crowd continue to chatter about Ukraine needing to give Putin something to save face before he nukes us all. You know, the same geniuses that both said Putin would never re-invade and the Ukrainians had to preemptively surrender just in case, then said the Russians would win within two or three days, then said the Ukrainians would never be able to hold out for more than a couple of weeks. Wash, rinse, repeat. Like a number of these people, I do strategic analysis, as well as other things, for a living. And that includes of Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s re-invasion. If I was as bad at doing it as the policy/think tank/academic/professional tankie crowd is I’d be fired! They, of course, will all get a bonus.

That’s enough for tonight.

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Open thread!

Reader Interactions

134Comments

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    There are at least some reports of some trains crossing the bridge, but going from “double track supporting heavy cargo trains moving at full speed” to “single track, need to slow down while crossing the problematic bits, passengers and light cargo only” is still a major inconvenience for the Russians to put it mildly.

    Wonder whether they still have all of the ferries they used before the bridge was built.

  9. 9.

    Leto

    Two videos of the bridge explosion. In the second video, they’re filming in what appears to be in a CCTV room and the video on the monitor is of the explosion. Two seconds into the video you can see the bow of a boat just enter the frame under the bridge, then the explosion. It’d be far easier, cheaper to simply r/c a boat down the river (let the current take it/minimal course corrections via motor) than a suicide mission (truck) or some type of sub (dissipation of blast due to water/additional burden of a sub).

  10. 10.

    Downpuppy

    And the stories about Russian officers being arrested in Moscow?
    They sound weakly sourced, but there have been a lot of command changes and scapegoating.

  11. 11.

    TaMara

    You know, the same geniuses that both said Putin would never re-invade and the Ukrainians had to preemptively surrender just in case, then said the Russians would win within two or three days, then said the Ukrainians would never be able to hold out for more than a couple of weeks. Wash, rinse, repeat. Like a number of these people, I do strategic analysis, as well as other things, for a living. And that includes of Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s re-invasion. If I was as bad at doing it as the policy/think tank/academic/professional tankie crowd is I’d be fired! They, of course, will all get a bonus.

    I will never forget/forgive Julia Ioffe going on Colbert and basically saying Ukraine needed to surrender immediately (this was before the invasion) in order to survive. I think Adam had already been discussing here that Ukraine was better prepared than anyone was giving them credit for, so I was appalled at her appearance.

  13. 13.

    moops

    @dmsilev: I doubt that bridge is going to remain standing if they are already running cars and trains over those extremely sketchy sections.  They are keeping it open for propaganda reasons, not sound engineering.   The road and the tracks are disturbingly crooked.  I saw video of the section the cars were being allowed over.  Almost a 15 degree pitch to the side in the middle.  The rails are also not lined up correctly.

  15. 15.

    dmsilev

    @moops: Well, if it collapses a week from now without any additional earth-shattering kabooms, the Russians are going to look even more ineffectual and I’m sure at least some of them are competent enough to realize that. Whether that’s enough given the pressure to reopen, I guess we’ll see.

  18. 18.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Downpuppy: Nothing confirmed. Which is why I didn’t include anything on it in the update. Videos from central Moscow show normal traffic, so the reports that the city center had been locked down were clearly false.

  19. 19.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    At every point where one would expect Putin to do something escalatory – every time his force’s have had a major setback – he hasn’t actually escalated. He’s just reiterated that everything is going to plan while his catspaws and sycophants provide ever more incredulous explanations for what the Ukrainian military just did to Russian forces. Just keep this reality in mind when you see the policy/think tank/academic/professional tankie crowd continue to chatter about Ukraine needing to give Putin something to save face before he nukes us all. You know, the same geniuses that both said Putin would never re-invade and the Ukrainians had to preemptively surrender just in case, then said the Russians would win within two or three days, then said the Ukrainians would never be able to hold out for more than a couple of weeks. Wash, rinse, repeat.

    Yeah, this x10000. And it is getting more and more tiresome every day to see people wanting Ukraine and the world to bend over backwards to make putin happy. For one thing, I refuse to believe that man has the capacity for happiness or any other human emotion aside from rage and spite. And also, since when was “cave immediately to the bully” seen as the right path? Especially when said bully apparently has a brain made of Swiss cheese. I don’t care what people say about how smart he supposedly is. He’s not.

    I liked Zelenskyy’s thoughts about putin’s well-being.

    Thank you as always, Adam. And don’t worry–you’d never get fired from Balloon Juice. John is too much of a softie.

  24. 24.

    sdhays

    @moops: It’s hard to conceive how they would have been able to do a full engineering assessment at this point considering it didn’t just collapse but had a raging fire going for hours. Just considering the heat involved and the challenges of the train being out there in the middle of the ocean, it’s questionable that they’ve been able to move the train and get the tracks cleaned up so quickly.

    Maybe the Russian version of an engineering assessment is “eh, it’s still standing, it’s probably fine”.

  25. 25.

    HumboldtBlue

    @TaMara:

    We haven’t seen McCaffrey on MSNBC since the first week of the invasion, after he sang the same doom tune about how Ukraine would be swiftly brushed aside and that the Russians were too well-equipped and prepared. He could not have been more wrong.

  27. 27.

    Anonymous At Work

    Chuck Pfarrer’s updates are invaluable for a sense of progress.  However, the updates are showing an uptick in the amount of UAVs and drones that UA are destroying.  Is that a function of UA propaganda more or less than RU troubles with logistics for artillery and tanks?

  28. 28.

    Anonymous At Work

    Any word on the cause of Starlink issues in Ukrainian territory?  Part of it could be problems in the worst way: Ukrainian forces out-pacing Starlink’s ability to cover the new territory.  Part of me distrusts Musk’s ego, though, and worries it is Musk throwing a temper-tantrum over being slapped down over his “peace ‘”‘”proposal'”‘”” (excessive air quotes removed, this is what I consider minimum required mockery).

  29. 29.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Anonymous At Work: What I explained in comments last night. The service was turned off in areas Russia was occupying. The Ukrainians have moved so far, so fast that Starlink can’t keep up with the changes and the Ukrainian forces are now where the Russians were. And were the Russians were the Starlink service is shut off. Starlink will eventually, hopefully sooner than later, get it sorted out.

  30. 30.

    oldster

    It’s all speculation at this stage, but I’m inclined to think it was an attack from the underside of the bridge, rather than from above. So, r/c boat more likely than missile, frogmen more likely than suicide truck driver.

    The bottom-up attack would explain why they struck spans that are the lowest and closest to the water, rather than the high arches a few hundred yards away, and also why they were not able to go after the rail bridge directly.

    If we see the russians putting out torpedo nets after this then that will suggest corroboration of the aquatic attack theory.

    I wish they could have severed both directions of the road bed, but what they did should have a considerable effect on the volume of truck traffic. And perhaps the heroes managed to weaken the other elements enough to cause them to collapse in a week or two.

    However that goes, the psychological blow was splendid. Heroyam Slava!

  31. 31.

    GibberJack

    UKR Naval special warfare? Wow. Snuck up, planted charges on the bridge under the Ruskies’ noses and blew it the fuck up.

    The audacity and courage of these people!

    This kind of shit wins wars.

    eta: That’s exactly how I pictured Carlo Graziano!

    eta eta: Ok just kidding. Mostly. But I hope Carlo keeps posting!

  33. 33.

    Bill Arnold

    Been watching a few youtube videos of fuel-air explosions at 0.25X/quarter speed; interesting and a bit scary for those made of meat.
    For those who want to geek out, this is interesting. (40 years old, fwiw).
    The Interaction of Non-Nuclear Munitions with Structures (1983, dtic.mil url so your IP address will be on a list if you click)
    Sadly, it’s a scan.
    In particular, internal page 139/pdf page 154, “CONCRETE BRIDGES SUBJECTED TO IMPULSIVE LOADING FROM FUEL-AIR EXPLOSIVES”
    I do not have practical experience with contemporary structural engineering/large explosions; would be interested to hear from anyone who does.

    [retyped from image]Fuel-air explosives may provide an effective means of demolition for a wide variety of bridge structures provided that impulsive loadings of the order of 50kN sec/metersquared can be generated. Loadings of 25Kn sec/metersquared are likely to be effective for all but short span bridges of fairly heavy construction.

    (Their model does not appear to cover explosions that lift a bridge deck.)

  34. 34.

    sdhays

    @Anonymous At Work: Starlink connectivity isn’t being provided to Ukraine at Musk’s whim. It’s being provided on (very expensive) contract with the US government. If he’s fucking with that contract, he could lose SpaceX (because the US government is still the primary customer for SpaceX and if they find they can’t trust SpaceX…).

    I expect there’s a technical explanation unrelated to Musk’s brain shits.

  35. 35.

    Anonymous At Work

    @oldster: Probably planted explosive on the lower parts of spans, not a r/c detonation.  More precision in the damage, even if they couldn’t get the upper arches to topple.

    Either way, resources to repair and then resources to guard.  It isn’t a short bridge either.

  36. 36.

    Anonymous At Work

    @sdhays: @Adam L Silverman: Addressed it.  I don’t know the terms of the deal, but I imagine there are a variety of ways for Musk to vent a temper tantrum without a material breach of the contract.  As much as I distrust the man/boy, he did jump in to volunteer coverage to both Ukraine and Iran in ways that both help their people immensely and promote the utility of his service.  

  37. 37.

    Bill Arnold

    @Leto:
    That second video is interesting, and downloadable as an mp4 as well. Looks like a boat. Provenance of video?

  39. 39.

    GibberJack

    @Bill Arnold:

    (Their model does not appear to cover explosions that lift a bridge deck.)

    Oh droll. Very droll. 👍

    eta: I don’t know a thing about ordnance effects on bunkers but I do know a small bit about seismic effects on buildings. The heading “Soil Liquifaction” caught my eye. Holy mother of god, if a non-nuke can create that condition…

    Think of your basement sewer backing up. Filling up your basement. Except its not sewage its the very earth your basement sits in. When it moves it flows like a liquid. When it stops becomes solid like the earth.

    You don’t want to be in there. No one wants to be buried alive.

    That is if the shock waves propagating through the liquefaction hasn’t resulted in your structure being literally jiggled and shaken down upon you.

  40. 40.

    Martin

    @sdhays: Well, Tesla is pretty exposed in China. And SpaceX like any space business is going to be mired in geopolitics. This wouldn’t be a problem if Musk wasn’t as easy to roll as Trump was.

    In terms of a technical explanation – geofencing should be pretty quick to push out to the satellites. My guess is DOD is being slow to give SpaceX the updated coordinates. SpaceX isn’t going to work that out on their own.

  41. 41.

    Jay

    @Anonymous At Work:

    However, the updates are showing an uptick in the amount of UAVs and drones that UA are destroying. Is that a function of UA propaganda more or less than RU troubles with logistics for artillery and tanks?

    The Shaheed suicide drones are launched from a truck rack of 5, rocket assisted. Shortly after they were first spotted in Ukraine, the UA “smoked” one of the early deployed units.

    One of the early deployed Mojhir(sp?) drones crashed into the Black Sea just off the coast of Ukraine.

    Many of Ukraine’s drone operators were drone hobbiests before.

    Russia doesn’t have many hobbiests, the drones are Iranian and there is a learning curve.

    I would also suspect that Ukraine has gotten better at both detecting the drones and countering the drones, so they appear in reports more.

  42. 42.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Adam, what do you think would happen if Ukraine were to retake Crimea, hypothetically speaking *knock on wood so I don’t jinx anything*? I’ve read that the peninsula is mostly ethnically Russian. Do you think this could present problems?

  43. 43.

    dmsilev

    @Martin: Musk is probably pretty distracted right now given that it’s more and more likely that he’ll be forced to go through with the Twitter purchase he’s been desperately trying to weasel out of for the last few months. The judge in the lawsuit gave him three weeks to pay up and close the deal, with a very barely concealed ‘or else’ following.

  44. 44.

    oldster

    @Anonymous At Work:

    So you’re imagining an operation in which divers planted many hundreds of kgs of explosive on the piers, snuck away, and detonated them remotely?

    Could be. That setup would allow them to trigger it while the railcars were alongside.

    Do you figure they used minisubs to get there and out again? Kayaks?

    I have no arguments against these possibilities. Could be. Pity if true, though, because harder to repeat.

    Adam, if you put up a thermometer on the front page, do you think we could fundraise to buy them the extra long-range atacms? Once they get those, they’ll be able to reach out and touch the bridge with greater ease and safety.

  46. 46.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Martin: A lot of companies are very exposed to China, both as a supplier & as a market. However, Elon Musk is the only one mouthing off on things he does not understand.

  51. 51.

    Poe Larity

    Well I have to do a logistical extraction in the morning nowheresville central valley. Never even heard of the town. Relatives always find the most interesting places to break down.

  52. 52.

    Geoduck

    I really wonder what kind of guards the Russians had on the bridge before this happened. Was it really possible for the Ukrainians to just drive an explosive-laden boat up alongside and set it off?

  54. 54.

    Another Scott

    @dmsilev: It’s not clear to me that Musk can be “forced” to buy Twitter, especially with the way the banksters are going to be hurting. Bloomberg (from 10/7):

    When banks led by Morgan Stanley agreed in April to help finance Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter Inc., they were eager to aid an important client, the richest person in the world. Now neither Musk nor the banks have an obvious way to wriggle out of it.

    Lenders that also include Bank of America Corp., Barclays Plc and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. committed to provide $13 billion of debt financing for the deal. Their losses would amount to $500 million or more if the debt were to be sold now, according to Bloomberg calculations. They agreed to fund the purchase whether or not they were able to offload the debt to outside investors, according to public documents and lawyers who have looked at them.

    “I think that those banks would like to get out of it, I think the deal makes less sense for them now, and that the debt will be harder to syndicate to investors,” said Howard Fischer, partner at law firm Moses Singer. But Fischer, a former senior trial counsel at the Securities and Exchange Commission who isn’t involved in Twitter, said there’s no legal basis for them to back out.

    IIRC, Musk still has an out if he can’t get the financing. Yes, the banksters and oligarchs said they would provide financing, but they should have better lawyers than Musk and should have included some get-out-of-deal-without-losing-$500M language.

    My crystal ball tells me that Musk won’t be willing/able to do the deal by 10/28, and the trial will go ahead sometime in November. Musk will want to avoid discovery, so he’ll want to settle and is willing to pay more than $1B (dunno how much more) to do so. Twitter will keep pushing about discovery and forcing the deal, the banksters will say sure we’ll provide financing but at new (much more expensive) terms that Musk won’t like. It’ll take a while, but Musk is going to lose and he won’t get Twitter either.

    Maybe?

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  55. 55.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Also, I think it’s fair to say that the timing of the Crimean Bridge explosion, if it was done by the UAF, was also to limit any civilian casualties given it occurred during the early morning hours

  56. 56.

    oldster

    @HumboldtBlue:

    I have high hopes for Iran, but also an intense awareness that I have *no* idea of what’s really going on, who are the real players, what will be required for change, who are the possible allies, etc.

    So a video like this raises as many questions, and worries, as it does hopes.

    Not knowing the language, and having so few windows into the society and power structures, I feel completely at a loss even to speculate. I hope that the good people will succeed in doing good things, and that the bad people will be prevented from doing bad things. That’s about as specific as I can get.

  57. 57.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Another Scott:

    It’ll take a while, but Musk is going to lose and he won’t get Twitter either.

    What do you think Musk would do if he did get Twitter?

  59. 59.

    Bill Arnold

    @Geoduck:

    Was it really possible for the Ukrainians to just drive an explosive-laden boat up alongside and set it off?

    Well, for instance, it has been reported that a scathing ship review of the Moskva a couple of weeks before the invasion reported that two of three anti-antiship-missile defense systems were down, and only one rapidfire gun was working. Also a boat could be low-profile and/or semi-submerged.
    (What sunk the Moskva?)

  63. 63.

    OverTwistWillie

    The road decks were blown off the bearings, and that rail bridge took an awful lot of heat.

    Likely they are doing the Baghdad Bob PR number because they can’t source replacement components in Russia.

  64. 64.

    HumboldtBlue

    @oldster:

    So a video like this raises as many questions, and worries, as it does hopes.

    Agreed, it’s extraordinarily difficult to gauge what is actually happening, but I take heart that videos of defiance and protest continue to be released because that means the protests continue to take place. The regime murdered people in the street in 2019, that’s not happening this time around, at least not on the same murderous scale.

  67. 67.

    dmsilev

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): In theory, the court can seize Musk’s assets, like Tesla and SpaceX shares (both are incorporated in Delaware, so within the court’s jurisdiction), to sell to make the price.

    Edit: SpaceX does have shares, though they’re not publicly traded so valuing and selling them would be more difficult than with Tesla.

  69. 69.

    Another Scott

    @Adam L Silverman: The headline I saw then was that a bank or two was backing out of leading the financing.  Let’s see…

    Reuters (from 10/5):

    NEW YORK, Oct 5 (Reuters) – Apollo Global Management Inc (APO.N) and Sixth Street Partners, which had been looking to provide financing for Elon Musk’s proposed $44 billion buyout of Twitter Inc (TWTR.N), are no longer in talks with the billionaire entrepreneur, said two sources familiar with the matter.

    Apollo had been in talks to provide preferred equity financing for the deal, alongside Sixth Street, sources previously told Reuters. Apollo, Sixth Street and other investors were looking to commit more than $1 billion in financing for the deal at the time.

    In reply to tweets saying that neither entities were part of the $7.1 billion of third-party equity financing announced in early May, nor part of the debt financing, Musk said: “correct”.

    […]

    The “debt” financing vs the other kinds is probably significant. Lots of different buckets of money are being taken and the debt dumped on Twitter, of course.

    No deal is done until it’s done, so I still think it could fall apart. However, another Bloomberg story from 10/4 makes it seem like the banksters take a bath all the time:

    Twitter shareholders voted Sept. 13 to accept the buyout offer as Musk originally submitted it. Depending on the closing date of the deal, banks will have a limited amount of time to offload the debt to investors. That would force them to fund the financing themselves — as is expected on another big buyout deal in the pipeline for Nielsen Holdings Plc.

    Wall Street has been struggling to offload leveraged buyout debt in recent months. Part of the package for Citrix Systems Inc., for example, sold in September at a steep discount and left the banks holding about $6.5 billion of debt and realizing roughly $600 million in losses. Shortly after, a group of banks got stuck with roughly $4 billion of bonds and loans tied to an Apollo Global Management Inc.-backed buyout that wasn’t able to garner much demand and was pulled from the market last week.

    Interesting that AGM is in both stories. Hmm…

    So, who knows.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  71. 71.

    dirge

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Why not both?  Also, bonus:  Crimea wakes up to a black cloud over the Kerch Strait, bridge closure, and incoherent flailing from the authorities, then has all day to speculate about it all with friends and family.  Good timing for propaganda value.

  72. 72.

    Anoniminous

    Thing to note: a double track rail way transships 3 to 4 times the amount of stuff a single track carries. With the damage the Russians can only move at best 1/4 to 1/3 of the previous amount of stuff.

  73. 73.

    HumboldtBlue

    The Phillies just beat the Cardinals, and now it’s on to Atlanta, and we’re bringing Billy Sherman along to burn that motherfucker down!

    Again!

  74. 74.

    dirge

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Yes, that’d probably be a bad thing, but there’s a tendency to overestimate what he could actually do.  Either he realizes how much work has gone into making the place tolerable, and remains largely hands off, or he actually tries to implement his sophomoric ideas (same ones twitter tried and abandoned a decade ago), and turns his investment into a worthless cesspit.

    Twitter isn’t necessarily a permanent feature of the landscape.  It’s not really that hard to replace.  It won’t be the first, or the tenth, seemingly irreplaceable platform to evaporate overnight once the experience falls below a certain threshold.

  75. 75.

    Anoniminous

    @dmsilev: ​
     

    Delaware Court of Chancery will either force Elon to purchase Twitter at the agreed price or rule yelling “BACKSIES!!!!” is now sufficient for a party in a contract to break a contract. Since the latter would be an “innovation” in US Corporate Law I’ll bet on the former.

    Also, idiot has the personal wealth to finance the deal. He doesn’t want to because losing Other People’s Money hurts him not at all.

  77. 77.

    dirge

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I do hope you’re right

    Well, bear in mind I’m just saying Musk probably can’t use Twitter to make the problem presented by social media all that much worse than it already is.  You should probably hope I’m wrong about the scale and nature of that problem.

  78. 78.

    steve g

    “A high brisance explosion occurred at this point.”

    In explosives engineering, brisance is the shattering capability of a high explosive, determined mainly by its detonation pressure.  – Wikipedia

  80. 80.

    way2blue

    @dmsilev: Can’t Musk bail with a $1B penalty?  i.e., the ‘earnest’ money either party would forfeit if they backed out.  Or did I misunderstand the original agreement?

  81. 81.

    way2blue

    @oldster: I attended a briefing by a structural engineer not long after 9-11 explaining how the twin towers collapsed.  Basically, the heat from the ignited jet fuel plus the burning of all the flammable stuff in the buildings raised the temperature above the ‘ductile point’ of the steel framework.  I’m wondering if the burning fuel in the Kerch railroad tank cars reached high enough temperature for the tracks & underlying metal structure to become ductile.  And if so, what does that mean for their strength once they’ve cooled again?

  82. 82.

    ColoradoGuy

    So, to summarize, one railway track of the bridge is in semi-usable condition, the other track is seriously damaged by extreme heat, one direction of the roadway is in the water, and the other direction is only carrying limited vehicle traffic in one direction  at a time. So the bridge can now only handle a small fraction of the previous rail and vehicle freight, with unknown reliability going forward, and all the other routes between Crimea and Russia are subject to HIMARS and artillery fire from Ukrainian positions.

    The Russian population of Crimea might be wise to start buying ferry tickets now, and beat the rush later.

  83. 83.

    dirge

    @way2blue:

    I believe he needs a real reason to bail out with the $1B penalty.  “I changed my mind” doesn’t cut it.  If he’s listening to decent advice (doubtful) he’s either trying to pull the deal back together, or angling for a settlement well above $1B.

  84. 84.

    Sebastian

    @Another Scott:

    Chancellor McCormick has him boxed in. His texts showed that he can conjure a billion USD “or more” via text messages. He cannot return to her and say “I couldn’t find anyone to lend me money.”

    I recommend following The Chancery Daily (Twitter @chancery_daily) for outstanding coverage of all aspects of this case.

  87. 87.

    Carlo Graziani

    Incidentally, the high-resolution version of the Ukraine rail map from the War of the Trains is available here. There’s a key in the upper right that gives rail capacity — 1 vs 2 track, displayed on the map as thin versus thick lines. Of course, as I discussed, Ukrainian interdiction of Russian logistics, such as the HIMARS attacks on the tank supply train pulling into Yasynuvata on 22 September and on the ammunition supply train in Kherson Oblast on 31 July are the more critical factors now — the entire southern Ukraine east-west line is in HIMARS range of the front lines, and hence effectively interdicted, so there isn’t even any point in discussing its capacity. No supply train  transiting the Donetsk city area  is safe.

  88. 88.

    Booger

    @steve g: Brisance is largely what makes the difference between high explosives and low explosives. Low explosives deflagrate, where a combustion front passes from one particle/grain to the next; high explosives detonate, with a shock wave passing the explosion through the explosive material at a very high speed. Makes all the difference in the world.

  89. 89.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Booger: If you want to “blow stuff up” like in a Roadrunner cartoon a low or medium explosive will do the job. If you want to tear or shatter concrete and steel structures then you need a high explosive. The plastiques like semtex and Compound 4 are super-high explosives, sort of, with much improved brisance.

    The Kerch bridge bomb was a lot of high explosive and it clearly exploded under the bridge deck which at that point in the roadway was very close to sealevel. There were pictures published recently of a presumably Ukranian drone sub/boat that washed up on a Black Sea beach near Sevastapol. I didn’t get any sort of a scale of how big this boat was but maybe it was a test item or prototype. Another alternative is that the Ukranians sent several small boats of this type loaded with high explosive to the same location under the roadway one after the other and then detonated them all together. My guess is that setting fire to the oil tanker rail cars high above the waterline was a bonus from the Goddess Fortuna.

  91. 91.

    Geminid

    @Robert Sneddon: It could be that Ukrainian Special Forces operators scaled a support pier, hauled up the explosives, and placed them on top of the piers. A picture showing a crumpled pier top with rebar showing supports this idea.

  92. 92.

    Jinchi

    @Geminid: ​
      Chuck Pfarrer now seems to think a missile is the most likely explanation, which would be pretty remarkable if true and really bad news for Putin, since it would imply they could fire off another one to finish the job.

  93. 93.

    Geminid

    @Jinchi: A missile would be great! But judging from the bridge pier picture I saw, the missile would have had to hit and penetrate the bridge right at that pier. Mr. Ponomarenko’s still seems a better theory, and it might be supported by inside information he’s received.

    But I am hoping that the Ukrainians have finished some Hrim-2 rockets. That program seemed to go silent after the one successful test of a Hrim-2 in 2019. The Hrim-2 is a rocket that can carry a 500 kilogram warhead ~500 miles. It’s designed to be fired from a mobile launcher, and a military parade the year after the test featured a large vehicle that was said to be an empty Hrim-2 launcher.

    There was a flurry of speculation about the Hrim-2 after a very destructive attack on a Russian naval air base in Crimea, last August. Some observers thought that three similar sized, large and circular blast craters were caused by a salvo of ballistic missiles of the Hrim-2 type. Others were sceptical and said the lack of known testing, and the lack of visible vapor trails ruled out the Hrim-2.

    At the time, an article in a Ukrainian newspaper noted that the company developing the Hrim has an underground, Soviet era factory.

    Ukraine came out of the Soviet Union with a lot of rocket scientists, plus engineers and fabricators. They have tried to develop the industry. The Neptune anti-ship cruise missile is the one new major weapon system Ukraine definitely has put to use. Two Neptune cruise missiles were credited with sinking the Moskva.

    The Hrim-2 project was started with funding from the government of Saudi Arabia. There was to be an export version for the Saudis and others. It would have a shorter range conforming to international regulations regarding ballistic missiles.

  94. 94.

    Jinchi

    @Geminid: ​
     
    Mr. Ponomarenko’s still seems a better theory, and it might be supported by inside information he’s received.

    I agree. But even that scenario is pretty remarkable. Ukrainians being able to plant bombs on a strategically vital bridge in an area completely controlled by Russian military forces would say a lot about both the Ukrainian and Russian military forces.

  95. 95.

    Geminid

    @Jinchi: I’m not surprised the Russians could not keep secure the area around a 17 mile bridge. Ukrainian partisans may have monitered their security practices and identified weaknesses.

    The Ukrainian special forces train hard for such missions, but it would still require a lot of guts. It reminds me of the fictional sabotage of The Bridge Over the River Kwai.  That one was problematic, but still successful.

  96. 96.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Jinchi: Pfarrer is talking through the hole in his backside as usual. Based on zero evidence, he’s concluded that the Ukrainians used ATACMS missiles. And if they had those, which they don’t, because the US has not released them, they would not use a fuel train as a secondary explosive, ignited by a strike on the road span (!) instead of the rail span. That’s an imbecilic theory. They would use the HE penetrating warheads to take out a couple of railway span support pylons, after which that bridge would never come back.

    His dismissal of the possibility of the assembly of a truck bomb in Russia as “non-viable” suggests that he wasn’t paying attention when the Murrah building was demolished by a truck bomb using 6000lb of ANFO in Oklahoma City, or that he thinks that military explosives are somehow difficult to buy in Russia if one has a lot of money.

    The guy just picks conclusions that he likes, then whips up “evidence” to match.

  97. 97.

    Carlo Graziani

    This is a very simple mission assuming a truck, an organization, and patience.

    You start or buy a company in Crimea that needs regular deliveries from Russia. You hire a Russian driver who knows nothing of the operation, and pay him a normal wage to make regular deliveries. You let him make several real deliveries, and probably you wire the truck for sound and video, inside and outside, so you can check out bridge security.

    After many deliveries, the bridge security personnel knows the driver, and security checks are perfunctory –which is what we see on the CCTV video of the semi going through security. You arrange for a delivery to go with the truck full of explosives, somehow delaying the driver until the train timing is right. Then, when you see the train on the truck video feed, you detonate the explosive.

    Keep in mind that the truck theory is the only one that explains why the road span took most of the bomb energy and most of the damage. A rocket, boat, or planted explosives, operated or emplaced by non-idiots, would, of course, target the rail span directly.

  98. 98.

    Geminid

    @Carlo Graziani: The scenario Mr. Ponomarenko suggested seems more doable. It would have required a surreptitious approach by four operators in a small boat, climbing gear to scale the two piers and tackle to pull up a hundred kilos or so of plastic explosives. They could have done the job in the early hours and been gone in a half hour, probably less. Vehicle bridges are noisy and the little sound made would not have been noticed.

  102. 102.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Carlo Graziani: Others have noted that the road bridge sections were much closer to the sea; combined with the roadway’s greater width, would offer much more protection from observation.  The railroad pylons, by contrast, would offer complete exposure.

    Maybe it’s as simple as that.

  103. 103.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Geminid: Also, I am extremely skeptical of claims that a surreptitious approach to the Kerch bridge in smallcraft is “doable”. That is the first and most obvious risk to the security of the bridge, and the one most directly addressable by military assets and methods, as opposed to truck inspections.  Pretty sure there are all kinds of obstacles and tripwires down in the water nearby, and even just radar would make it hard to get within a mile undetected. You would also not get any opportunities for reconnaisance or dry runs. It’s just an awful plan that has Fail stamped all over it, in my opinion. Would only work in a movie.

  105. 105.

    Geminid

    @Carlo Graziani: Maybe it was not a mistake. Mining the road pylon tops may have required less explosives and allowed simpler placement. Blowing the rail bridge might have required more explosives and time than was feasible. Also, the open nature of the structure might have neccesitated some form of tamping, or shaped charges. And it would certainly afford the sappers less concealment.

  106. 106.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Carlo Graziani: Also, also note: the attack is credited, by Ukrainian sources to the SBU (law enforcement, intelligence, and security agency) and not to the UA SOF. The SBU are spies, not soldiers. They don’t put on war paint and row out to scale bridge pylons wearing backpack bombs. They infiltrate enemy countries and carry out complex operations. They are almost certainly the people who arranged the car bomb that killed Dugina.

    The truck caper that I outlined is certainly not the only operation of the sort that they could have arranged for this purpose, but it fits the profile. They have the resources, can embed in Russia without being detected, are operationally very capable, and are utterly ruthless.

  107. 107.

    Geminid

    @Carlo Graziani: Do you know that the Russians had radar that could detect a small boat, and had it deployed along the 17 miles of the bridge and monitored? They certainly should have, but did they?

    I think pictures of the pylon tops support Ponomarenko’s version. And I’m not sure even a powerful truck bomb would have lifted the bridge spans the way they appear to have been lifted. Much of the blast force would have been expended upwards and outwards.

    Hopefully, though, we will see more pictures, and analysis by demolition professionals. That would better inform our speculation.

  108. 108.

    Another Scott

    @Carlo Graziani: I haven’t been able to figure something out: Do you know if the truck was coming from russia or from Crimea?  I haven’t been able to work it out yet, but I haven’t tried terribly hard yet…

    Hmm…

    Ok.

    Google Maps satellite view shows the road bridge is on the north side. So the truck was coming from russia, not Crimea. And that makes sense based on the commentary, but I don’t know that I’ve seen it said explicitly.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  109. 109.

    charon

    twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1579039607345549312

    Front-line situation in Kherson:

    both sides have taken a tactical pause. Ternovi Pody northeast of Posad Pokrovske was taken, this starts to form an interesting salient, but this is not the tempo that was at the beginning of the offensive.

    twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1579039608423469056

    Similar things are happening in the Svatove direction in Kharkiv. Both sides are amassing forces.

    Overall frontline situation:

    Currently, the most important factor is not terrain or weather but the availability and quantity of reserves on both sides.

  111. 111.

    charon

    twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1579039609589489664

    Arestovich estimates that the Russians do not have large reserves, but they may commit depleted units filled with mobilized personnel even though these are not combat-ready yet.

    twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1579039610646466561

    Some sources even indicate that the Russians may be preparing a counterattack in the Svatove direction. Changes on the front will depend on who will first commit their reserves, and where.

  113. 113.

    Another Scott

    KyivIndependent:

    Crimean bridge explosion
    The Kremlin had publicly accused Ukraine of the attack on the bridge built to connect Russian-occupied Crimea with Russia.

    Chairman of Russia’s Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin said that Ukraine was “assisted by Russian citizens and foreigners.”

    According to Russian authorities, a truck packed with explosives detonated on the bridge near a tanker train which caused a chain reaction.

    The U.K. intelligence said on Oct. 9 that the transit via the bridge is “seriously degraded,” with two of the four roadway lanes collapsing in several places.

    The report said that the extent of the damage on the bridge’s rail crossing is unclear, but “any serious disruption to its capacity will highly likely have a significant impact on Russia’s already strained ability to sustain its forces in southern Ukraine.”

    Ukraine didn’t comment on the alleged involvement in the blast, with the advisor to the President’s Office, Mykhailo Podolyak, saying on Oct. 8 that it was potentially a result of an internal conflict in Russia.

    Ukrainian officials and the public have largely welcomed the attack on the bridge seen as a pillar of Putin’s regime.

    U.S. national security spokesman John Kirby declined to comment on the explosion during an interview with ABC News on Oct. 9. Still, he added that Washington would continue to supply arms to Ukraine.

    (emphasis added.)

    “Hey, maybe it was people not happy with you, VVP, inside russia. Maybe. Can’t be sure, maybe you have chekist spies around you and need need to look around. Can’t be too careful.”

    Hehe.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  114. 114.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Another Scott: I have seen CCTV images of the truck going through security in Taman, on the Russian side (on The Drive, two days ago), and that’s the point at which I baked in a presumption that it was Crimea-bound.

  115. 115.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: From the Kyiv Post article ” Ukrainian attack devastates logistically critical Russia-Crimea bridge,” datelined October 8:

         Anatoly Hereschenko, an Interior Ministry official, said the location and extent of damage pointed to explosives placed by a sabotage team under the causeway, possibly by frogmen.

    Interestingly the paragraph above this one said security officials attributed the operation to the SBU, but the writer did not note any conflict here with Hereschenko’s version. But why wouldn’t the SBU have the capability to perform maritime missions anyway?

    The article also has this somewhat amusing report:

    [Crimean Parliament member] Konstantinov in subsequent official comment called on residents not to place videos of the damaged bridge on the Internet, in the interests of state security. Social media posters ignored the appeal, and some Crimean motorists drove onto the causeway following the blast to record high definition video of the damage, and a total absence of RF officials on the scene.

  116. 116.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Geminid:

    @Carlo Graziani: Do you know that the Russians had radar that could detect a small boat, and had it deployed along the 17 miles of the bridge and monitored? They certainly should have, but did they?

    Of course nobody knows that, that is talking. I just think that even given the conspicuous Russian incompetence demonstrated in this war, the military knew the value of the bridge and the risk to which it was exposed, as well as the risk to which military commanders would be exposed in the event of a successful attack. Given how relatively easy this type of defense is — how often do Iranian PT boats succeed in sneaking up to the US Navy in the Gulf? — I feel that the balance of probabilities is that this easily identified, easily defended-against, mother-of-all-career-ending risks got proper attention.

    And, again, the whole operation strikes me as the sort of thing that would only happen in a movie. One shot, no recon, no dry runs, and the enemy has to look the wrong way, and there have to be no underwater obstacles or tripwires or sensors that you don’t know about, etc. The risks of failure seem so high that it would be an option in a desperate last-ditch situation, not a first choice for an army that’s already winning the war.

  117. 117.

    Another Scott

    @Geminid: Rule #1 – VVP’s russia lies about everything.

    Rule #2 – Nothing bad is ever VVP’s fault.

    Stipulating to those rules, which is more likely?  A) Poorly searched truck packed with hidden explosives made it through russia’s “you pretend to pay me, I pretend to work” culture to blow up a roadway that also set an adjacent oil train on fire?  B) Ukrainian supermen frogmen plant hundreds of pounds of explosives around a critical bridge in enemy waters without being detected, but blow up the road bridge rather than the train bridge which is the obviously critical target?

    “Our defenses are perfect!  Our searches are perfect!  It only happened because of Anglo-Saxon NATO Nazi supermen!  Nobody could have predicted!!!”

    ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  118. 118.

    Geminid

    @Another Scott: The statement in the Kyiv Post that the damage indicates explosives were placed under the causeway came from a Ukrainian Interior Ministry official, so I don’t know how your “rule #1” applies here.

    Unless it is applied to the statement from Mr. Konstantinov,  a Crimean Parliament member quoted in the article, that a truck bomb was used in the attack.

    As to your confident assertion that the a marine operation would never blow up the vehicle span when the rail span was a better target, I refer you to comments #102 and #105.

  119. 119.

    Geminid

    @Carlo Graziani: The situation of Iranian speedboats appoaching US Navy ships in the Persian Gulf is so far removed from that of a stealthy night time approach in a small boat or by frogmen, to a 17 mile long bridge guarded by the Russian military, that I am surprised you would make such an analogy.

  121. 121.

    Another Scott

    @Geminid: Sorry for misinterpreting your post.

    Links make things easier.

    Wikipedia seems to indicate that Herashchenko is currently an “official advisor” who left office in August 2021.

    I haven’t seen any photos of significant damage to the support columns. The MAXAR photo seems to indicate that the road blast happened between the supports, not at the supports. The under-bridge photo shows a hole in the roadway roughly mid-span and no obvious extreme damage to the support in the top-mid center of the frame.

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  122. 122.

    Bill Arnold

    What are peoples’ rankings of theories for how the railway cars were ignited? The resulting damage to Russian logistics is what matters, but I’m curious about peoples’s speculations.
    e.g.
    (1) lucky damage from the fairly distant primary explosion.
    (2) a simultaneous attack on the train
    (a-) A bit far for an explosively formed penetrator from water or road level, and no sign of such in public videos, and aiming would be a challenge.
    (b-) no sign on public videos of a missile including an ATGM or similar
    (c+) a charge(shaped?) on one or more train cars that was fused to detonate either by remote control or when a nearby detonation was detected or by timer, or some combination.
    (d?) undetected human sappers (both arrival and escape).

  123. 123.

    Another Scott

    @Bill Arnold: I think the truck bomb boom was big enough, with enough shrapnel, for pieces to cover the 50-75-100 feet or so to ignite the oil train.  As they seemingly overwhelmingly likely intended.  (I think this is another reason why an explosion under the roadway doesn’t seem plausible – it would have made it more difficult to ignite the train (as the roadway would have blocked much of the blast).)

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  124. 124.

    Geminid

     

     

    @Another Scott: Like I said earlier, I’ve seen pictures of damaged pier tops. One had twisted rebar showing.

    And it was the Kyiv Post reporter, not me, who described Hereschenko as an Interior Ministry official.

  125. 125.

    Geminid

    @Gin & Tonic: Why couldn’t the SBU borrow Ukrainian military personnel trained in these types of operations, to execute this one under their auspices.

  126. 126.

    Geminid

    @Bill Arnold: One hundred kilos of Semtex placed on top of the trainside causeway pier would be a powerful charge. It would have sent a lot of hot shrapnel flying, some above the plane of the roadway. Over that distance, the upward deflection would not have to too great.

  127. 127.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Geminid: Why wouldn’t the military just do it? What does the SBU add? That would be like the FBI running a domestic op but farming the kinetic part  out to SEAL Team Six. Given the role of the SBU, this doesn’t make sense.

  128. 128.

    Geminid

    @Gin & Tonic: I’m not the one saying the SBU executed this operation. Other commenters are taking a statement to that effect published by Ukrainian news media as proof that it was a truck bomb that damaged the Kerch Bridge, and not explosives placed under causeway members as Mr. Ponomarenko and Mr. Hereschenko have suggested.

    Ponomarenko’s tweet to that effect is up in the post, and Hereschenko’s opinion is in the excerpt from a Kyiv Post article in comment #115.

    The post also has a Chuck Pfarrer tweet about the bridge:

        KERCH BRIDGE/DAMAGE ASSESSMENT. At 0607 Local time, an explosion occurred on a bridge pier supporting road sections of the bridge linking Russia to the Crimean Peninsula. Preliminary BDA assessment indicates precise explosive placement; a UKR Naval Special Warfare op cannot be ruled out.

    Now I need to check out Pfarrer’s timeline, to see if any of Balloon Juice’s newly minted demolitions experts have jumped in to bombsplain how a UKR Naval Special Warfare op can indeed be ruled out.

  130. 130.

    Another Scott

    @Geminid: “Cannot be ruled out” is not an affirmative claim.  It’s “clouds and shadows,” wanting the reader to think that the writer is saying something when they’re not.

    Maybe Pfarrer has gotten better over the years, but he has a history of making claims that aren’t supported by evidence.

    Maybe we’ll have real information about what happened on the bridge and why in the passage of time. Maybe we won’t. Lots of parties have interests in keeping others, and the public, guessing (for good and bad reasons).

    It’s an interesting puzzle.

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  131. 131.

    Another Scott

    @Bill Arnold: The train seems to me to be stopped in the video showing the shot directly down the roadway before the explosion. e.g. here starting 2:06 or so.

    The Maxar picture is from an angle, which is good for showing the elevation difference.  A full overhead shot, like Google Maps satellite view, seems to show them closer.  (Note the semi-trailer in the map – those are roughly 70 feet long.).  But, yeah, on the order of 100-125 feet might be a better guess of the bee-line distance to the train.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  132. 132.

    Geminid

    @Another Scott: Oh, I don’t take anything Pfarrer says as neccesarily true. He did make a positive assertion that the damage indicated precise placement of explosives and he’s not the only one I’ve seen say this. We certainly will know more, and perhaps can already find more information and well founded assessments from experts. This incident happened less than 48 hours ago.

    Some Ukrainians certainly know the truth, and Russians may know it too. Here I would point out that Konstantinov, the Crimean Parliament member, was very quick to lay the blame on a truck bomb. This narrative would be favored by Russia because truck bombs are associated with terrorism and are considered a relatively barbaric tactic. Admitting that this operation was a daring, precise demolition operation would testify to Ukrainian military prowess and Russian incompetence.

    That’s not to say it could not have been a truck bomb, but the explaination put out by Russians may have made a bigger impression because it came so quickly.

  133. 133.

    Bill Arnold

    @Another Scott:

    The train seems to me to be stopped in the video showing the shot directly down the roadway before the explosion

    OK. That the train was (apparently) stationary is interesting; i.e. why was it stationary?
    Anyway, new nightly thread.

  134. 134.

    Another Scott

    @Bill Arnold: Dunno.  But trains stop for lots of reasons.  Maybe they still don’t fully trust it to handle the weight??

    Wikipedia:

    The rail bridge was inaugurated on 23 December 2019 and the first scheduled passenger train crossed the bridge two days later. The bridge was opened for freight trains on 30 June 2020.

    Six full months after they let passengers on trains they finally allowed freight?? But maybe it was associated freight handling facilities issues, not the bridge itself. Who knows…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

Comments are closed.