Back Story Newsletter
Good morning,
Crimean Bridge
It appears Russian leader Putin’s so-called prestige project, his 12 mile Kerch Straight Bridge, was badly damaged but still open Sunday.
A bomb or missile (Ukrainian reports say a truck bomb but it could have been a boat bomb or missile) hit the bridge within hours of Putins 70th birthday, collapsing one side of the traffic lanes, and setting one rail line ablaze.
The bridge was built after Russian illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, and is a vital supply route for Russian forces in Crimea and elsewhere.
“Crimea, the bridge, the beginning,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, Tweeted on Saturday. “Everything illegal, must be destroyed. Everything stolen returned to Ukraine. All Russian occupiers expelled.”
By chance this week I interviewed former U.S. Army LTG (RET) Ben Hodges who spoke at length about Crimea, predicting “all roads lead to Crimea” stating soon Ukrainian HIMARS will be able to target the peninsula with rocket fire, and that Russian occupation “will become untenable”.
Hodges also discusses the nuclear threat from Russia and how America would be forced to respond depending on how an attack might be carried out and where.
Russian commentators took to the airwaves after the bridge blast demanding revenge, in the form of strikes on infrastructure in Ukraine. And overnight Russia fired close to a dozen missiles, hitting apartment buildings in Zaporizhzhia killing 17 people and damaging 45 apartments.
This is likely not the Russian payback for the Crimean Bridge, if one is being contemplated by Putin’s war machine which launched the invasion of Ukraine in February.
Overall Russian troops appear to be on retreat in many areas of Ukraine, as they are low on manpower, and said to be in disarray.
Ukrainian troops are involved in very tough fighting near the strategically important eastern town of Bakhmut, which Russia is trying to take, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in video address on Saturday.
I spoke to Canadian Correspondent Fred Weir who is based in Moscow for the Christian Science Monitor about how the war is playing in Russia and the military draft’s effects on Russians.
Weir minimizes Russian internal division, and predicts if Russia can regroup in Ukraine, it will be a very different war in January. You don’t have to agree with him, but the perspective is sobering and balanced.
ThanksGiving Canada
That’s enough for today folks, from London. As a Canadian I will be cooking a turkey today for thanksgiving which is celebrated in Canada on October 10, but many of us have our dinners tonight on the 9th.
The 1621 feast between Native Americans and Pilgrims is a well-known origin story of American Thanksgiving. Canadian Thanksgiving, however, may have begun much sooner.
The holiday can be traced back to the explorer Martin Frobisher’s third voyage to Canada in 1578. Frobisher was an English explorer who arrived in Newfoundland while searching for the Northwest Passage.
After Frobisher and his crew arrived they ate a meal of salt beef, biscuits and mushy peas to celebrate and give thanks for their safe arrival in Newfoundland.
Canadians always seem a step ahead of their neighbours to the South! In the case of Thanksgiving by 43 years or so.
Dana Lewis