The Kremlin intends to show that the attack on the Crimean bridge was not that serious and that the crucial lifeline from the Russian mainland to the illegally annexed Crimean peninsula will soon return to normal.
The physical damage can be repaired – Russia immediately sent a large emergency team to the scene – but the damage to Russia’s prestige and, more importantly, to Vladimir Putin’s image, will not be so easy to repair.
This is his bridge, his project, built with the equivalent of nearly $4 billion from the Russian treasury. It’s a symbolic “marriage band” that joins mother Russia and Ukraine, or at least a region that still legally belongs to Ukraine, critical not only to Putin’s war effort but also to his obsession with bringing Ukraine back under control of Russia.
Putin’s Feb. 21 speech to the Russian people, delivered shortly before he ordered the invasion of Ukraine, revealed his distorted view of history. Ukraine, he insists, is not really an independent country: “Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us,” he argued. “It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space.”
This speech, one of the most revealing of his presidency, makes it clear that this fratricidal war against Ukraine is very personal to him. For many years he was fixated on Peter the Great, the Russian tsar who founded St. Petersburg, the city where Putin was born and raised. I once visited the city administration office where Putin worked in the early 1990s after returning from his work as a KGB agent in East Germany. On the wall above his desk was a portrait of Peter the Great.
In June this year, as the brutal war in Ukraine entered its fourth month, Putin again compared himself to Peter the Great, insisting that Peter, who had conquered land from Sweden, was “returning” to Russia what it actually belonged to her.
Putin now, apparently, believes that the return of Ukraine to Russia is his historical destiny. He probably sees the horrific attack on the Crimean bridge not only as an attack on the Russian homeland, but also as a personal affront. And he is likely to respond with malice.
Already, a day after the attack, Russian forces are shelling civilian apartment buildings in Ukraine. Putin’s hardliners are calling for more strikes on Ukraine’s infrastructure. Western leaders warn that an increasingly frustrated Putin may resort to using tactical nuclear weapons. Military experts say it could respond asymmetrically, hitting unexpected targets.
For years, Putin had another obsession: punishing traitors. A month after his forces invaded Ukraine, he threatened to strike back against any Russians who opposed the war, calling them a “fifth column … national traitors” who are after the West.
This Sunday, the day after the bridge bombing, he called it a “terrorist attack” whose “authors, executors and masterminds” are the secret services of Ukraine…and “citizens of Russia from foreign countries.”
One thing is clear: as the fighting moves closer to Russia, Vladimir Putin sees his “historic mission” in jeopardy. And that means emotions could override logic. For Ukraine, for Russians who oppose the war, and for the world, this is a dangerous moment.
