Crimean Bridge Destruction Inevitable If Isolation Succeeds

(CRIMEA) – The Crimean Bridge will eventually be destroyed if Ukraine isolates the peninsula, according to a retired senior NATO commander who described Crimea as the decisive terrain of the war.

Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, former commanding general of United States Army Europe, said that Russia’s ability to control the Black Sea depends on its hold on Crimea. “If Russia is no longer able to use any of those ports there, and they’ve already had to move the Black Sea fleet out of Sevastopol, but it still has airfields there. It still has capabilities. If the Ukrainians were able to isolate it, that big bridge is eventually going to come down,” he told Times Radio’s Frontline programme.

Hodges said Crimea remains central to the conflict because of both its symbolic value to the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and its practical military importance. The Russian dictator’s full scale invasion began with the seizure of Crimea in 2014, and the peninsula’s ports allow Moscow to project power across the Black Sea.

The comments came as Hodges welcomed the electoral defeat of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a Kremlin ally who had blocked European Union funding for Ukraine. Orban lost in a landslide to Peter Magyar, who has signalled willingness to unlock a €90 billion (approximately $96.3 billion USD) loan package for Kyiv.

Hodges described the result as “great news” and said he expected a new Hungarian government to remove the veto against EU funds for Ukraine “pretty soon”. He added that the funding was critically urgent, stating: “I think they are only a couple of months away from literally running out of money. So this is none too soon.”

The retired general also highlighted the psychological importance of removing what he called a “Russian fuelled, Russian influenced voice” from decision making tables in Brussels. He noted that Russian influence has declined across multiple regions, including Venezuela, Syria, Iran, and Moldova, with only Georgia and Belarus remaining as reliable partners for Moscow.

“People that Russia has supported in the past, Venezuela got no help, Armenia got no help, Syria got no help. The attempt to influence the election in Moldova was a failure,” Hodges said. “The Russians’ ability to influence what is going on inside the boundaries of their neighbours is decreasing partly because of their failures and inability to win this war that they have started against Ukraine.”

Hodges assessed that momentum has shifted towards Ukraine despite ongoing challenges with Russian attacks on civilian targets. He noted that air defence assets have been moved around the Russian dictator’s residence outside Moscow, and that Ukrainian forces are advancing through some Russian defensive lines.

The former general identified Ukraine’s campaign against Russian oil and gas export infrastructure as the most promising path to victory. “If they can damage Russia’s export ability so significantly that they can no longer afford the war, and then the oligarchs start getting very uncomfortable with all of this,” he said.

He argued that Russia’s vast size, once an asset, had become a liability in modern warfare. “With long range precision weapons, it has become a liability that the Ukrainians are exploiting because the Russians cannot cover all of it.”

On the Black Sea fleet, Hodges noted the fourth anniversary of the sinking of the Moskva, Russia’s flagship cruiser. He said the Ukrainians had recently damaged or destroyed the last of the railway ferries supplying Crimea, and had struck the railway link across the Kerch Bridge, forcing Russia to rely on road routes through occupied parts of Donbas.

Hodges said he did not anticipate a direct amphibious assault on Crimea in the near future, but expressed confidence that the peninsula remained on the objective list of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, and Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence (GUR).

He suggested that Ukraine’s future security guarantee would resemble Israel’s model, with a large defence industry, a capable territorial reserve force, and an intelligence arm capable of targeting Russian officers responsible for war crimes. “The GUR is going to make life miserable for these Russian officers who will spend the rest of their life checking under their car and looking over their shoulder,” Hodges said. He added that Russia had not demonstrated a comparable capability against Ukraine.

(The interview was produced by Times Radio on Frontline programme. Location of discussion: London, United Kingdom.)