Supplying Crimea, Part 1

by Donald Hill

Jun 18, 2026

In 2023, then-Russian Defense Minister Shoigu said that Russian troops needed 10-15,000 tons of fuel and ammo and 1500 tons of drinking water a day across the Ukrainian front. In June 2023, an epidemic of cholera spread among Russian personnel in Kherson and Crimea oblasts after Russia destroyed the Kakhovka dam and disrupted the water supply. Unable to supply them with bottled or purified water, Russian soldiers drank water from open sources and became sick. An incredible amount of supplies is needed to keep an army running.

Ukraine is trying to cut off Russia’s supply lines to Crimea. It started with an attack on the Kerch bridge in October 2022. A truck bomb destroyed a span of the vehicle bridge and set a fuel train on the railroad bridge on fire. That fire weakened the railroad bridge. In July 2023, naval drones damaged both the road and rail sections of the Kerch bridge. In June 2025, an underwater drone attacked a section of the vehicular bridge but it reopened soon after the attack.

After the 2023 attack, Russia reduced the dangerous loads on the Kerch rail bridge. There used to be 42-46 trains crossing the bridge with weapons and ammo each day. In the first three months of 2024 only one train with 55 fuel cars crossed the Kerch bridge. After that, Russia stopped sending flammable and explosive cargo across the bridge to prevent structural damage if the cargo was attacked.

Ukraine then attacked the Chonhar vehicular bridges in the northeast of Crimea with Storm Shadow missiles in 2023, but they had a limited number of the missiles, the missiles were expensive, and Russia built a pontoon bridge as an alternative crossing. The attacks could not be sustained and Russia eventually repaired the concrete bridges.

At Chonhar there is an old and a new highway bridge. When both were damaged (red circles) in 2023, the Russians built ramps and a pontoon bridge to bypass the damaged bridges. They’re doing so again but drones are attacking the pontoon bridges, as well.

Russia started relying on its ships to carry the fuel but Ukraine had been attacking Russia’s naval transports for years. When the railway ferries were damaged in June 2024, Russia was forced to temporarily transport dangerous cargo on the Kerch bridge for a while again. In March and April 2026, Ukraine attacked the last railway ferry working the Kerch Strait and put it out of operation. There are still smaller car ferries but they cannot carry the same loads and they operate at their peril.

(Left) There are three major vehicular entry points into Crimea that have highways. Chonar and Kerch are the closest to Russia. (Right) There are three entry points for rail, as well, but the rail line passing through Armiansk does not connect to any rail lines coming from Russia.

Russia relied on the railroads in the occupied territories to transport supplies to Crimea, but in the spring of 2025, Ukrainian drones started attacking the trains that used them. Trucks carried fuel and other supplies on roads in the same region but now Ukrainian drones are attacking targets all the way to the Azov Sea. While this has reduced the number of trucks delivering supplies and slowed many of the other trucks that use secondary roads, it has not eliminated all the cargo from reaching Crimea. To reduce the flow of supplies to Crimea even more, Ukraine once again started attacking the bridges leading to that occupied territory.

There is an old highway bridge and a new highway bridge at Chonhar. Both have been damaged and are impassable. As with the 2023 attacks, Russia built a pontoon bridge as an alternate crossing but it was also destroyed. The Railroad bridge has been attacked multiple times. There are no reports of attacks on the dirt road causeway and bridge. That road is about 3 meters wide and the bridge may not be able to sustain heavy loads.

With Russia avoiding sending dangerous cargo over the Kerch Bridge, Chonar is the most important entry point into Crimea because it is closer than Armiansk. Only local traffic uses the dirt road bridge.

To the east of Chonhar is Henichesk, which is at the northern end of the Arabat Spit road. It’s a shorter route to Kerch but a much longer route to reach the rest of Crimea, and trucks can’t travel on that road as fast as on a highway. Henichesk is the only place where Syvash Lake connects to the ocean.

Ukraine could destroy the two bridges closest to Henichesk but they both lead to a single road and another bridge 1500 meters to the south. Attacking that single bridge cuts off all access between Henichesk and the Arabat Spit road, so it was destroyed.

The 110 km Arabat Spit road is a short cut to Kerch, but it is a long detour from Dzhankoi, Simferopol and Sevastopol. It is a hard-packed dirt road that is just wide enough for two cars and there is room to pull off to the side. The southern end of the spit is connected to the peninsula by land so there is no bridge to be destroyed there.

Halfway between Armiansk and Chonar is the Syvash Lake bridge and causeway. It is 2600 meters long and there is a small bridge at the northern end of the causeway. The road is narrow and the bridge may not be able to bear a lot of weight. Any vehicle using that bridge would have to travel 60 km on secondary roads before reaching a highway.