In addition to head-to-head competition of strength, psychological warfare is also an important form of war, which is almost an instinct and nature of human beings. "Sun Tzu's Art of War" has already explained this: "Warriors use deceitful methods.

In addition to head-to-head strength competition, psychological warfare is also an important manifestation of war. It is almost an instinct and nature of human beings. This has already been explained in "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu: "Warriors are deceitful. Therefore, they can show their inability to use it, use it to show it is not in use, get close to show it is far away, and show it to be far away to show it is close. Use advantage to lure them, Take them in chaos, be prepared when they are strong, avoid them when you are angry, be arrogant when you are humble, work hard when you are close to them, attack them when they are unprepared, and surprise them by surprise. The victory of this military strategist cannot be passed on first. Also. "

On the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield, the psychological battle between the two sides has begun from the moment when Russia assembled its troops at the border in 021 year 1 month , and has continued to this day, filling every corner of the battlefield. Not a moment of rest. On the psychological battlefield between Russia and Ukraine, spans Kerch Strait , connects Crimean Peninsula and Russia's mainland Crimean Bridge, because of its iconic significance and important strategic value , and become the focus that attracts most people's attention.

■The situation between Russia and Ukraine before the war and the situation around the Sea of ​​Azov and the Crimean Bridge.

Target: Crimea Bridge

Recently, the Ukrainian military intelligence department suddenly posted a message on social media, saying "We have obtained detailed technical documents about the Crimea Bridge." At the same time, a long A 42 page Russian document titled "Working Document on the Construction of a Transport Channel Through the Kerch Strait" began to circulate wildly on the Internet. Although its authenticity cannot be verified, the document appears to contain detailed information about the Crimean Bridge in terms of terrain, pavement, piers, anti-skid structures, entrances and exits, and all infrastructure of the bridge complex.

■ Crimean Bridge "engineering documents" circulating on the Internet.

One day after the Ukrainian intelligence agency broke the news, Dmytro Marchenko, the commander of the Nikolayev area of ​​​​the southern theater of Ukraine, said that if the necessary weapons can be obtained, the Crimean Bridge will be The "number one target" of the Ukrainian army's attack , In a series of previous Ukraine official statements, Ukrainian President Zelenskiy repeatedly claimed that Ukraine would take back 014HT1, which was annexed by Russia in 2014. Asian peninsula.

■ Ukrainian army commander Dmytro Marchenko of Nikolayev .

This is not the first time that Ukraine has made a fuss about the Crimean Bridge. was first reported in 022 year html January 1 On January 1, Chairman of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov once said in an interview that if the Ukrainian army could obtain weapons suitable for attacking the Crimean Bridge weapons, then "it will solve a lot of problems for us." As a supplement, Ukraine's former deputy chief of general staff Igor Romanenko said that Ukraine may not be able to destroy the entire bridge, but it is theoretically possible to destroy the (Russian army) troops Strike at the right moment across the bridge.

■ Photographed by in 020 in January Crimea Bridge, with the Taman Port in Russia in the background.

html On January , on a website with the domain name crimeanbridgedown (Collapse of the Crimean Bridge) appeared on the Internet. An eye-catching red countdown was placed on the background of the bridge, and the time endpoint pointed to . htmlJanuary st , This day is the time when Russia’s traditional Victory Day military parade is held. The text below the countdown reads: " in 014 year grams Russians who immigrated after the occupation of Crimea, you still have time to leave the territory of the sovereign state of Ukraine! "

■"Collapse of the Crimean Bridge "Website countdown to before html January . webpage .

Just the day before the Russian Victory Day military parade was held that is html On January , Viktor Androsov, advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, also talked about in an interview: "Crimea Bridge It will definitely be destroyed , The only question is when this will happen. ”

■ Advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Viktor Androsov said in an interview with 4 channel : "gram The Rimean Bridge will definitely be destroyed."

Of course, we all know in the end, month day when the sky bridge is safe and sound, everything is just a bluff by the Ukrainians .

However, , that website has not disappeared now, but the red countdown has been replaced by a normally displayed green timer, and the text on the website has also been modified to: "We are not Nazis, not murderers, not robbers... we We are Ukrainians , and Crimea is our home, it is Ukrainian. We already have modern weapons that can strike from hundreds of kilometers away, but we do not want senseless death, bloodshed and destruction. Soon everything lost to ... enemies will be restored. Soon Crimea will become a modern European resort! Time is running out! ”

■ What the "Crimean Bridge Collapse" website looks like now.

The past and present life of the bridge

Are Ukrainians serious? We don’t know , , but they have repeatedly specifically picking up trouble on the Crimea Bridge, indicating that it must be one of the Russians G . Just mentioning it will touch their sensitivities. nerves. In fact, the Ukrainians did it. Almost every time they mentioned the Crimean Bridge, the Russians responded strongly. Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dimitri Peskov said that the attack on the bridge "is tantamount to announcing that a terrorist attack is imminent... This is unacceptable." Moscow has threatened to bomb Kiev whenever the Crimean bridge is attacked.

011 year month 0 image of the Kerch Strait taken by the Japanese satellite , with Kerch in Crimea on the left and the Taman Peninsula in Russia on the right , There is no bridge across the strait at this time.

Why does Russia attach so much importance to the Crimean Bridge? Because this is related to their century-old dream, the blueprint for this bridge had already been drawn in the minds of Russians more than a hundred years ago.

The Kerch Strait, which separates the Crimean Peninsula and the Taman Peninsula in mainland Russia, is the only channel connecting the Sea of ​​Azov and the Black Sea. , The narrowest part of the strait is only .1 kilometers wide. The average depth of sea water is 8 meters. Kerch, located at the easternmost tip of the Crimean Peninsula, and Taman, located at the westernmost tip of the Caucasus Mountains, face each other across the sea, and are within sight of each other. The Russians had considered building the Kerch Strait Bridge as early as 903 in 903 910 year Tsar Nicholas II approved geological and engineering surveys for the construction of the bridge , but Battle The outbreak of and followed by the Russian Revolution interrupted the bridge-building plan.

■ Painter Ivan Aivazovsky depicts 's 839 year engraved landscape on both sides of the Red Strait, with people on both sides of the strait facing each other across the sea.

In the blink of an eye, during the Second World War, the bridge-building plan on the Kerch Strait was finally launched, but it was not the Russians who started the project, but their mortal enemy the Germans. After the outbreak of the Soviet-German War, the German troops invaded the Crimean Peninsula in the summer of 1941 and besieged the Sevastopol Fortress, but could not capture it for a long time.

941html From January of 1941 to January of 11942html, the Soviet army took advantage of the winter ice period to launch an amphibious landing across the Kerch Strait, established a bridgehead position on the Kerch Peninsula at the eastern end of Crimea, and launched a fierce battle with the Germans. It was not until the summer of 942html that the German army conquered Sevastopol , repelled the Soviet army on the Kerch Peninsula, and completely occupied Crimea. At the same time, the German army marched towards the Caucasus, and the Taman Peninsula on the east coast of the Kerch Strait was also occupied by the German army. In order to facilitate transportation and logistics supply for the German troops on both sides of the Strait, the German army planned to build a bridge across the Kerch Strait.

■su junyu 941年 2月 6年 月 日在engraved Chi organized an amphibious landing offensive operation.

In the L1 season, ordered the construction of a highway railway bridge of .8 kilometers long . Still Bada Library oilfield . 943 year html January 4, an aerial cableway across the strait was built and put into use by the Germans, with a daily transportation capacity of 000 tons.

This transport capacity can only meet the defense needs of the German Army at the Kuban Bridgehead opposite. The Germans continued to build cross-sea bridges to replace the cableway bridges, However, the rapid development of the war situation made the German army The bridge construction plan was destined to be impossible to complete. In January 1943 943html, the retreating German troops blew up the bridge under construction and destroyed the cableway.

■ A cross-sea bridge built by the German army on the Kerch Strait during World War II, but as the war situation developed, the bridge was ultimately not completed.

Now it was the turn of the Soviets who launched a counterattack to need a cross-sea bridge. The Soviet army first restored the cableway transportation over the strait, and in 944 in January ordered the construction of the bridge using the bridge sites and materials left by the Germans A railway bridge , hurriedly, the bridge was put into use in 1 year . Its full length was .5 thousand meters, making it the longest bridge ever built in the Soviet era. , unfortunately , Due to the rush to work, there were serious problems in the design and construction. Only three 945 html was washed away by the floating ice in the strait in January . In the decades after World War II, due to the complex hydrogeological conditions of the Kerch Strait and actual transportation needs, transportation on both sides of the strait mainly relied on relatively simple trains/ car ferries, while the idea of ​​building a cross-sea bridge was shelved. in historical memory.

■The location of the Kerch Railway Bridge built by the Soviet army. Because of the war, both the Germans and the Soviets chose to build the bridge in the narrowest part of the strait.

Entering the 1st century, changes in the international situation gave the idea of ​​the Kerch Cross-Sea Bridge an unexpected opportunity to be realized. 014 year htmlIn January of 2014, Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula, and Russia-Ukraine relations deteriorated sharply. Ukraine closed the land access to the Crimean Peninsula, turning the peninsula into an isolated island. At this time, the Crimean Peninsula was connected to the Crimean Peninsula through a bridge. It is urgent for Russia to connect the Russian mainland.

Various route plans for erecting a cross-sea bridge on the Kerch Strait, among which the red color is the route selected by Russia in 2014, and the cyan color is 011 and the route selected by Ukraine in 2014 Route to .

014 year html January 9 , On the same day that Crimea was annexed to Russia, Russian President Putin announced that a road / railway large bridge would be built in the Kerch Strait. 15 In January 2015, the contract for the construction of the bridge was awarded to SGM Group. Construction started in January 016, and the highway bridge was completed and opened to traffic on January 1, 2018.The railway bridge was a little later and was not completed and opened to traffic until January 1, 2019. The Crimean Bridge is divided into parallel road bridges and railway bridges. The railway bridge has a total length of 8.1 kilometers, and the road bridge has a total length of 6.9 kilometers. It is the longest bridge in Europe. , is the largest under the bridge. The water depth is meter, the longest span is 27 meter, and the clearance under the bridge is less than 5 meter. The highway bridge is a two-way four-lane bridge, and the railway bridge is a double-track bridge. The cost is as high as 100 million rubles, or about 100 million US dollars, making it one of the most expensive bridges in the world.

■The Crimean Bridge under construction, the bridge arch across the main channel is in place.

At the inauguration ceremony of the highway bridge, President Putin personally drove the truck and led a convoy of trucks across the bridge. This shows how much Russia attaches importance to the Crimean Bridge. - In addition to its actual function, it It also declared to the outside world Russia's determination to firmly control Crimea, which is of great symbolic significance.

■ 018 year html January 5, Russian President Putin personally drove the leading truck through the Crimea Bridge.

Important but not important

As a century project and a transportation hub, the Crimean Bridge not only facilitates transportation on both sides of the Kerch Strait, but is also related to the economy and people's livelihood of the Crimean Peninsula. It also has the political value of declaring the sovereignty of the peninsula. , so it has dual strategic significance for Russia, It seems completely reasonable for Ukraine to regard it as 's "number one target".

■The Crimean Bridge is a parallel road bridge and railway bridge .

If you think so, you may have been fooled by the Ukrainians. Because at this stage, the Crimean Bridge is not that important to the Ukrainians, at least militarily..

If you turn the calendar back to to 022 year month 4 day will open Before the war, the Crimean Peninsula could only establish land contact with Russia through the bridge. However, now Russia has controlled in southern Ukraine. After Kherson and Zaporozhye, especially Mariupol, changed hands, the land passage from Donbas to Crimea has been opened, and the peninsula can be passed through the M14-E58 highway network. Melitopol is connected to Russia, and attacking the bridge will not achieve the goal of isolating Crimea.

■ Now the Crimean Peninsula can be connected to Russia via the road from Melitopol - Mariupol - Rostov-on-Don (red line in the picture).

At the same time, since Ukraine has lost all coastlines and ports along the Sea of ​​Azov, the role of the Crimean Bridge in controlling the Sea of ​​Azov is meaningless to Ukraine.

■The current situation in the Black Sea region shows that the Sea of ​​Azov has completely become an inland sea controlled by Russia.

and , For a goal like a bridge, if continuous monitoring and repeated attacks cannot be achieved, repairing it is not as difficult as imagined. For example, during the Vietnam War, the famous long-side highway / dual-purpose railway bridge (Paul Dumo Bridge) on the Red River. The U.S. military was dispatched on 967 year month 1 day 6 aircraftF-105 "Thunder King" combat bombing aircraft dropped 2 000 pound ( 362kg) bomb, blowing up three bridge spans, However, by 0html traffic resumed in early January .

reflect beautymilitaryF-105fightbombingmachine attacks painting of the long side bridge.

967 year 0html January 1html On the 1st, the US military once again dispatched 1 F-105 combat bombing aircraft to blow up the bridge, but this time it returned to normal operation within just a month. 967html 2htmlIn January of 1968, the US military dispatched 0 sorties of F-105 and carried out two violent attacks on the bridge, blowing up five bridge spans , to 968. The bridge had been unusable until the US military suspended bombing in January.

However, as soon as the US bombing stopped, the bridge was repaired and put into use again in just two months. This is still when the US military has complete air supremacy. Ukraine obviously does not have such capabilities as the US military, and Russia's bridge repair capability is definitely much better than the Vietnamese .

968 year 0html January 4 The photos of the Longside Bridge taken by the Japanese and American Chinese Air Force show that the bridge can still be used after repeated bombings.

It can be seen that at this stage, Ukraine’s attack on the Crimean Bridge has almost no practical significance in military terms. On the contrary, there is still a great risk of suffering the serious consequences of crazy retaliation from Russia. It is definitely not a good deal. Buy and sell.

It’s just that the Russians cannot afford to have their tower stolen by Ukraine in full view of the world. The dignified Black Sea Fleet flagship, the 10,000-ton "Moscow" guided missile cruiser has been sunk. If something happens to the bridge again, this person will really lose his fortune. Even if he is thick-skinned, he can't stand it. ah.

018 year month 4 Japanese satellite satellite captured the Crimean Bridge, with Tuzla Island in the middle.

According to Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidential office, the Crimean bridge "is protected by at least two anti-aircraft missile brigades, the entire Black Sea Fleet and a permanent air force. These forces... Specifically used to ensure that nothing can pose a threat to the bridge. "

However, the Crimean Bridge is not important to Ukraine now, which does not mean that it will not be important in the future.As the war situation continues to develop and change, if one day Ukraine can return militarily to its pre-war state, or even it is possible to retake the Crimean Peninsula, this bridge will become very critical , I don’t know what kind of fierce game the two sides will have around the Crimean Bridge by then.

■The Crimean Bridge after completion.