A Bridge Too Far

Just when Vladimir Putin thought he'd fixed things for good on the war in Ukraine by jacking up oil prices with Saudi Arabia's Mohammed bin Salman, the man who will be king, the Crimean Bridge, connecting Crimea - occupied by the Russians since 2014 - with the Russian North Caucasus region, was attacked.

An explosion did major damage to the road-and-rail bridge crossing the Kerch Strait, cutting off a vital supply line for Russia to aid the war effort in Ukraine and hold Crimea itself.

Putin celebrated this bridge as a big deal, and not just because it connects Russia and Crimea, given to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev (who grew up in Ukraine and who married a Ukrainian woman) at the expense of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic.  (Since Ukraine and Russia were both part of the Soviet Union, the best way to explain this land transfer is to imagine if President Eisenhower had transferred the Oklahoma Panhandle to Texas.)   Putin celebrated this bridge and officiated at its opening in 2018 because he saw it as technological marvel - twelve miles long over the Kerch Strait.

Uh, Vlad?  Dude?  Can I see you in my office?  Because we in the States have a seventeen-mile crossing - that's right, seventeen miles (about 27.3 kilometers) between Virginia Beach and Cape Charles on the Delmarva Peninsula.

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel?  Maybe you've heard of it.

I mean . . . it was built in 1964.

Did I mention the artificial islands made for the tunnel entrances?