Satellite Images Show Russian Smoke Screens to Obscure Kerch Bridge

Ukrainian forces are relentlessly targeting Russian supply lines, both overland routes and bridges, around occupied Crimea with drones. Russian forces are, in turn, throwing up smoke screens to shield a key bridge from attack, new satellite images provided by commercial satellite imagery company Vantor show.

Along the front lines, Ukraine has been increasingly using mid-range strike drones to implement a lockdown on Russian logistics. That growing logistics pressure extends to the Crimean peninsula, putting supply channels at risk. Russian forces are now repositioning air defenses and employing apparent countermeasures.

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, the GUR, has been targeting strategic overland supply routes, and its special operations forces have been destroying bridges. Over the past week, drones and missiles have damaged Russian infrastructure, vehicles, and energy sites.

The GUR released a video montage this week of recent strikes on supply routes.

“For some reason, the occupiers still think that their logistics routes through the so-called land corridor to the temporarily occupied Crimea are a safe walk,” the intelligence agency wrote on its Telegram channel, per a translation of the post. But its drones had a difference of opinion, it said.

Meanwhile, a Ukrainian special operations mid-range strike unit said that it had destroyed another key target, a railway bridge over the North Crimean Canal near the village of Rozdolne on the western side of Crimea.

The railway bridge was a transport route for cargo and military supplies from Russia through Crimea, the special operations forces said on social media. SOF drones destroyed the bridge during the night of June 22, hitting both the railway track and one of the bridge spans.

Other bridges in and around Crimea have also been hit, satellite images show. These include the Henichesk Bridge and Chonhar Bridge.

With Russian logistics under fire, other satellite images have captured apparent Russian countermeasures, smokescreens at some locations on the Kerch Bridge, a symbolic and strategic target for the Ukrainians also known as the Kerch Strait Bridge or Crimean Bridge. Vantor said multiple smoke generator vehicles were operating on the bridge, attempting to obscure parts of it.

Russia has previously used smoke generators to complicate efforts to target the bridge. The effectiveness of these generators is questionable, though, as wind and weather can limit the obscurant’s coverage. Also, the bridge is a fixed target with a known location.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said intelligence obtained by Kyiv from internal Russian documents tracked Moscow’s response to the long-range and intermediate-range strike campaigns, including the movement of air defense systems from other regions to Moscow and to the Kerch Bridge.

“The Russians have been ordered to protect” these areas, Zelenskyy said on X, “by weakening other areas on their own territory and in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine.”

Officials and war watchers have said Ukraine’s strike campaign is disrupting both supply transport to Russian troops as well as energy infrastructure in Crimea.

Ukraine’s Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said recently that “Crimea is being isolated by drones,” saying the mid-range strikes could “lead to very unexpected consequences for the Russians.”

The Institute for the Study of War, a DC-based think tank, highlighted in a new report a Ukrainian commander saying that strikes against Russian ground lines of communication in southern Ukraine, including bridges, “have significantly reduced the amount of supplies Russian forces operating in Zaporizhia Oblast are receiving from Crimea.”

It also noted reports of power outages affecting equipment at the state water enterprise in Crimea, as well as traffic jams on both sides of the Kerch Bridge.

Beyond being a supply and logistics line for Russia, the Kerch Bridge is also a symbolic monument to Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. Completed in 2018, it provides convenient access to the peninsula. Ukraine has repeatedly targeted the bridge with drones, including uncrewed surface vessels.