Aleksandra Simonova is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in International and Public Affairs at Brown University’s Watson Institute.
On 29 September 2024, a Russian Telegram channel associated with the anti-Putin opposition published a satellite image of the Kerch Strait Bridge, known as the Crimean Bridge, revealing new fortifications. Russia had surrounded the structure with a chain of barges to shield it from marine drones, and installed air defense systems to protect it from aerial threats. Since then, media outlets have claimed that Russia has been actively preparing for an attack on the bridge.
Opened in 2019, the Crimean Bridge was designed by the Russian state as a highly visible project. It is the most protected infrastructural object in Russia and holds immense personal significance for President Putin. Since its opening, the bridge has been a platform for state-sponsored events. However, after it was attacked in 2022 and again in 2023, it became clear that the bridge is a vulnerable object requiring not only surveillance and fortifications, but also media invisibility—an ironic reversal of its intended purpose. By damaging the bridge as military infrastructure, Ukraine is undermining the Kremlin’s symbolic power over Crimea.
After each attack, the Kremlin repaired the bridge physically and also worked to restore its symbolic value. Before examining these domestic responses and what they reveal about the current state of affairs in the Kremlin, it is important to understand the significance of the Crimean Bridge to both Putin and ordinary Russians. Spanning over 12 miles, the bridge was designed as the longest in Eastern Europe. Its scale recalls massive Soviet infrastructural projects like the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM), and indeed, Russian media framed its opening as a continuation of Soviet traditions of monumental construction.
Built after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, the bridge was meant to restore a direct physical connection between Crimea and Russia. In Putin's view, this connection had been unjustly severed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The bridge facilitated easier movement of goods and people between Russia and the Crimean peninsula, replacing earlier routes, which had been long and indirect. Symbolically, the bridge reinforced the notion that Crimea is a cornerstone of Russian identity and history.
According to Russian state mythology, Crimea is where Russian statehood originated in 988 CE with the baptism of Prince Vladimir in Khersones ( present-day Sevastopol). Crimea, as the site of several historic wars, including the nineteenth-century Crimean War and the Second World War, has been glorified in Russian narratives as a place of heroic resistance and patriotism.
In this context, Putin has staged numerous events on the bridge since 2019, aiming to cultivate patriotic feeling and support for the "Crimean Consensus," which justifies the 2014 annexation. Given the sanctions and economic hardships that followed, Putin has relied on these spectacles of national pride to maintain public support for his militarist agenda. Performative events on the bridge, including its opening ceremony in 2019, have been orchestrated to showcase solidarity between the people and their president.
The bridge has thus acquired a performative power beyond its physical function, symbolizing the unification of Russian history, geography, and identity. It has become a terrain of both military and symbolic conflict, particularly after 2022.
Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the bridge has taken on new visibility and function as a critical supply route for the Russian military. Linked to Russia via the bridge, Crimea serves as a vital hub for Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet and supports the supply chain for Russian forces occupying southern Ukraine. Trains crossing the bridge have reportedly been loaded with military equipment like howitzers, tanks, trucks, and fuel tanks.
Infrastructure generally remains invisible until a breakdown occurs, and accordingly, the Crimean Bridge rose to new prominence after it was attacked. The bombings of 2022 and 2023 brought international attention to the bridge as both a military target and a symbol of Russia’s contested control over Crimea. There is little doubt that Kyiv authorized both the October 2022 and July 2023 events, with president Zelenskyy eventually acknowledging the first bombing.
Both attacks presented real challenges to the infrastructural and symbolic foundations of Putin’s war effort. In response, Russia had to redirect military supplies through newly occupied territories along the Azov Sea. What remains unclear, however, is how to interpret the Kremlin’s contrasting domestic responses to each attack. The first, a highly publicized explosion that coincided with Putin’s 70th birthday, produced a primarily military reaction. Putin appointed General Sergei Surovikin to lead Russian forces in Ukraine and launched retaliatory attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.
The July 2023 attack, while damaging, prompted a different response. Russian officials reported that two maritime drones caused significant damage to two spans of the bridge, killing two adults and wounding a child. Russia's reaction was to withdraw from the Black Sea Grain Initiativeand launch an offensive on Odesa's port.
Domestically, however, the state emphasized the restoration of the "vertical of power." The July attack occurred just weeks after the Prigozhin mutiny in June 2023, which had revealed cracks in Putin’s system of governance. Russians are aware that official institutions like elections, parliament, and courts are not fully functional, but they believe Putin has built an alternative, more effective system of control. The mutiny raised doubts about this system’s resilience.
At night on July 17, just a few hours after the explosion on the bridge, Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin went directly to the epicenter of the attack. State-sponsored media showed him climbing down the hole in the bridge to inspect the conditions of the spans. The following day, Russian media broadcasted an online meeting between Putin and some of his key officials in an effort to project an image of restored control. In the meeting, Putin asked questions, Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin provided updates from the bridge, and regional governors explained their adherence to instructions. “The situation is clear, everyone knows what they have to do. I expect the work to be quickly organized and mutually coordinated,” Putin said as the meeting concluded. This performance aimed to reassure the public that the system was intact.
Another aspect of this “restoration of control” was immediate suppression of dissenting voices. In the days after the attack, public figures who criticized the war, like leftist intellectual Boris Kagarlitsky, were arrested. Kagarlitsky was charged with supporting terrorism for a social media post related to the first attack on the bridge.
Kagarlitsky’s critique—that the bridge symbolized the Putin era and that its collapse signalled the regime’s impending downfall—may prove prophetic. As the Kremlin doubles down on controlling both physical and symbolic spaces, including the media, it underscores the precariousness of Putin’s authority and the role the Crimean Bridge plays in maintaining it.
