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What the Kerch rail link meant for Crimea
Summary
A look back at the railway bridge opened across the Kerch Strait to occupied Crimea, and at a separate strike in Idlib reported the next day.
What did it mean when Russia opened a railway across the Kerch Strait to occupied Crimea? By 25 December 2019, two days after the opening, the question was already pressing for Ukraine and its neighbours.
On 23 December 2019, the railway bridge over the Kerch Strait was inaugurated. It was reported as the longest in Europe and as a link connecting Russia and Crimea. Ukrainian reporting described the completion of construction and the start of rail operation on a line joining Russia to Crimea, which Russia occupies.
Two reports, one actor
On 24 December 2019, a war monitor reported that eight people, five of them children, were killed when a missile hit a school in Jobas, in Idlib District, Syria. The school was being used as a shelter for displaced civilians. Opposition activists blamed Russia. The strike was part of the northwestern Syria offensive, which began in December 2019.
The two reports concern different places and different kinds of event, and no link between them was stated. Still, both appeared within a day of each other, and both involved Russia: in one case as the state that had built a rail connection to occupied Crimea, in the other as the party named by activists after the Idlib strike.
What mattered for Kyiv
For Kyiv, the rail line was a physical tie between Russia and territory it occupies. The bridge made that tie permanent in a way few other measures did. Whatever the commercial or logistical uses, the Ukrainian description stressed the occupation, not the engineering.
