Bridge of War

Abstract

The large-scale war, which began on February 24, 2022, divided the history of independent Ukraine into two parts. The enemy attacked along the common state border. The offensive in the south on the Taurid section of the front had a special place. The formation of a large military group on the territory of the annexed Crimea would not have been possible without the regular movement of military units and special equipment across the Crimean Bridge across the Kerch Strait. The article raises the question of whether such use of this strategically important object of transport infrastructure is accidental or whether its construction was necessary for military purposes? To confirm their hypothesis, the authors analyze all the bridges that were built and operated for a certain (short) period between the Crimean and Taman peninsulas. These are the German bridge of 1943, the Soviet bridge of 1944-1945 and the modern bridge, built by the decision of the Russian federal government after the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. It was established that all of them were built to ensure the implementation of military operations. An analysis of their construction directly indicates that these bridges were built in order to quickly move large military units in the Crimean direction. Thus, the existing Crimean bridge can rightly be called a bridge of war. In peacetime, there are no significant flows of people and goods that could determine the feasibility of its construction. It is worth noting that Ukrainian geographers, despite eight years of annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, have not published any publications on this issue. A natural question arises as to whether this is due to the fact that most of them were formed on the theoretical and methodological basis of the Soviet and post-Soviet scientific schools, where issues of military and political geography have always been marginal topics of open research. The authors propose to study the phenomenon of “bridge of war” to involve modern post-classical works of French geographers, which should help correct the situation in Ukrainian geography, when issues of territorial integrity and military action were to become priority rather than marginal topics of research.