Keeping the Bridges Open

One afternoon recently, I took my car to a service station to the “left bank” of the Dnipro river. With a meeting to attend near Zoloti Vorota (Golden Gate) on the right bank, I was planning to take the Metro back across the river and return for my car in the evening. The metro ride would have taken no more than 40 minutes, but there was an air raid alert and, as usual during alerts, the metro trains stopped crossing the river. I got as far as Osokorki metro station – the last one before the bridge – and booked an Uber, thinking I could cross the river that way. But they couldn’t find a car for me. For half an hour I stood at the edge of Mykola Bazhan Avenue, looking toward the bridge which I very much wanted to cross. Then, just as I was cancelling my Uber request, for the first time since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion I saw a Russian drone dive onto a car-filled avenue and explode on the road, next to a huge NOVUS supermarket.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. I’ve often seen Russian drones in the sky above me. I’ve seen missiles flying overhead several times, and I’ve heard explosions from drones and missiles hundreds of times, but I’ve never seen a drone dive toward its chosen target. Half an hour later, still standing there, I learned from one of Kyiv’s many air raid information sites that, miraculously, no one had been killed in the attack. However, several people were injured, and shrapnel destroyed some cars and damaged others. Other Topics of Interest Drones Target Nizhnekamsk Hub and Slavyansk Refinery in Russia Drones struck the Nizhnekamsk petrochemical hub in Tatarstan and sparked a fire at an oil refinery in Slavyansk-on-Kuban early Sunday morning, Sept. 13. Most likely, the drone’s target wasn’t the road, but the NOVUS supermarket nearby. Russia has already destroyed several warehouses of this Lithuanian chain, as well as some of their stores. If the “Shahed” had reached the supermarket, there would have been many casualties. It missed by a mere 100 meters, leaving a meter-deep crater on the road. Traffic on the avenue came to a halt. Ambulances, police, firefighters, and road maintenance vehicles arrived very quickly. An hour and a half later, the injured had been evacuated, and the hole created by the explosion had been repaired. The police finished drawing up a report on yet another Russian war crime, and traffic on the avenue was restored. Only one burned-out car remained stranded on edge of the road. Since drones were still flying over Kyiv, the Metro bridges remained closed. I cancelled my meeting in central Kyiv and returned to the service station, where I waited for my car. Russia’s new tactics, which keep drones in the skies over the capital almost constantly, have further divided Kyiv into two “cities” – the “left bank” – a “dormitory” town with plenty of amenities of its own, and the “right bank,” with its ancient city center, the government quarter, and residential areas with older buildings and a buzzing café and restaurant culture that defies the air raid warnings. The left and right banks of the Ukrainian capital are connected by eight bridges. Two of them support railways, and two are combined metro/road bridges. Two million residents live on each side of the Dnipro River, and hundreds of thousands commute to the other bank every day. It’s therefore not surprising that residents are increasingly concerned about Russian attempts to disrupt communication between Kyiv’s left and right banks. The bridge debate was recently fueled by Denis Yaroslavsky – an officer in the Assault Troops Command. He stated that Russia plans to attack Kyiv’s bridges in order to paralyze the capital. Other experts were more reassuring, arguing that drones or conventional missiles could not destroy powerful structures like bridges. They could only damage them. Destroying a bridge would require multiple, well-aimed hits from heavy missiles on its supports, which the Russians are unlikely to be able to pull off. However, Russia has destroyed or seriously damaged approximately 350 Ukrainian bridges. Last Sunday, Russia bombed and made impassable one of the two bridges over the Kazennyi Donets River in Kramatorsk, an industrial city in Ukraine-controlled Donbas, only 10 kilometers from the front line. The destruction of this bridge will weaken the ability of Ukrainian troops to defend the front line. While there’s some good news on the military and anti-corruption fronts, with no comprehensive victory in sight, the home front is growing fragile. The recent uncovering of racketeering and fraud protection at the General Procurator’s Office, cause tremendous angst among the population and damaged a sense of unity. Meanwhile, bridges between Ukraine’s many and varied social groups need constant attention and support. I was impressed by efforts in this direction coming from civil servants responsible for culture in Zhytomyr region. They recently organized a day of exploration and networking for the region’s librarians. The day’s events brought the librarians together with representatives of the region’s agricultural and food processing industries, as well as cultural personalities with links to the local area – including myself and the well-known actor Bohdan Beniuk. A few days before the event, copies of my recently published novel, which were to be presented to the librarians, had been destroyed in a missile attack on a Zhytomyr Nova Poshta (New Post company) warehouse, but, immediately, a local businessman offered to fund the procurement of replacement stock. Perhaps it is easier to build bridges in smaller communities inside one region, but bridges of all kinds in Ukraine’s big cities will need special attention as winter approaches and US peace missions fade into the sunset. The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.