Vladimir Putin humiliated in Crimea

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The explosion that put the bridge connecting the peninsula to Russia out of service is a setback for the Russian army and a snub for the Kremlin despot.

By Luc De Barochez

L’humiliation is severe for Vladimir Putin. The explosion that partially destroyed the Kerch Bridge on Saturday, the most important link between Russia and Crimea, is a personal setback for the Russian president. It was he who had ordered the construction of the 19 km work, the longest in Europe, after the annexation of the peninsula in 2014. It was he who had inaugurated it in 2018, in a debauchery of triumphalist propaganda.

What neither Tsar Nicolas II nor Stalin had succeeded in doing, he had accomplished: crossing the Kerch Strait, which separates the Sea of ​​Azov from the Black Sea, mooring Crimea to Russia, and thus signifying Ukraine and its Western supporters that this land was part of the “Russian world”.

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