ATACMS Strikes Could Sever Russia's Crimea Link: Kyiv General

The head of Ukrainian military intelligence has said that Kyiv can use American-supplied long-range weapons to target the bridge linking Crimea with Russia.

The Kerch Bridge has a four-lane road and a double-track railway and links Russia's Krasnodar region with the peninsula Vladimir Putin illegally annexed in 2014. Over the course of the war started by Putin, the bridge has been a key supply route for Russian forces as well as a symbol of Moscow's occupation.

Ukraine has scored successes in hitting the 12-mile bridge such as on July 17, 2023, when a strike destroyed part of both the road and railway sections of the bridge. In October 2022, part of it was blown up with an improvised explosive device that had power equivalent to 10 tons of TNT, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported.

Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, chief of Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR), said in an interview that an attack on the bridge using ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) missiles could sever the link to Russia once and for all.

He told The Philadelphia Inquirer that those who claim ATACMS were not powerful enough to destroy the bridge "should read the technical manuals."

"The only question is their quantities," he said, adding that in principle, "these missiles will allow us to fulfill such a mission."

Washington's policy regarding Ukraine's use of U.S.-provided weapons allows Kyiv to hit anywhere within Russian-occupied Ukraine, which the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said is likely to include long-range ATACMS striking the part of the Kerch Bridge within Ukraine's internationally recognized land and maritime borders.

The bridge's destruction would mean Russian forces would have to rely on the long route along the northern coast of the Sea of Azov, which Ukrainian forces could exploit, the Washington, D.C., think tank said on Monday.

In May, Molfar, an open-source intelligence agency based in Kyiv said its analysis of Maxar satellite imagery over the past year showed Russia rerouting military supplies.

It found no Russian freight trains with military equipment traveled on the railway section of the bridge in March and April 2024. In February, only one freight train crossed the bridge although it was not clear if it was transporting any military equipment.

Artem Starosiek, CEO and founder of Molfar told Newsweek in May that the SBU had helped curb Russian military transport over the bridge.

"It was a great job by the SBU," he said. "But right now we have other problems because Russia are going through the occupied cities like Mariupol, Berdiansk and built a railway line there which they are using instead of the bridge." He added that hitting the bridge still had significant "symbolic meaning."

Budanov rejected claims Putin would use nuclear weapons if Crimea were threatened, telling The Inquirer, "we don't have big concentrations of troops for which such nuclear weapons would be appropriate."

Also, such a move "would lead to big political risks for Putin," he added.

Elsewhere in the interview, Budanov said that Western military aid would not arrive in Ukraine in sufficient quantities to change the situation on the front line until at least mid to late July. With artillery shells arriving from the U.S. and Europe, he said weapons delivery was happening more quickly than a few months ago, but "there is a question of volume."