Vladimir Putin will have renewed anxiety after Crimea bridge attack
This second attack on the Kerch Bridge is very bad news for Russia and its leader, both strategically and symbolically.
The bridge is one of only two ways for Russia to supply the Crimean Peninsula, which it occupied in 2014.
The other route is the coastal highway on the Sea of Azov that runs through the strip of occupied land that bridges Crimea with the Russian-occupied Donbas region in the east of Ukraine. That route is also threatened by Ukrainian missile strikes.
The bridge attack has severed, for now at least, one of the two main military arteries pumping supplies of men and weapons to the front.
It will have an economic impact too, and its impact on morale will be significant for the many Russians living and working in Crimea.
Should Ukraine’s counteroffensive threaten Crimea, they know there could be no escape route if the bridge continues to be knocked out.
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Which brings us to its symbolic significance, Vladimir Putin seems hugely proud of the bridge.
He has boasted that it fulfils the dream of Tsars and Soviet leaders to connect Russia with Crimea, which Moscow claims for historic reasons.
When the bridge was last destroyed, it was rebuilt and then personally reopened by Mr Putin, who drove across it in a Mercedes.
Mr Putin launched his war in Ukraine partly to make Russia safer in the face, he says, of NATO aggression.
If the invasion ends up compromising Russia’s grip on land it already holds, then he will be seen to have failed.
Losing Crimea or part of it would likely be a job-ending scenario for the Russian leader. This second successful bridge attack will be a cause of renewed anxiety for him.
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For Ukrainians, whose counteroffensive so far appears to have become bogged down in minefields and Russia’s network of defences and trenches, the attack will be a morale boost.
But it will not alter the fact that its efforts to repel the invader are making very slow progress, and the West’s efforts to give Kyiv the means to achieve that end have so far been too little, too late.