BULL, The Crimea is of the upmost importance to Russia and they would never do anything to that area. Catherine the Great bought the Crimea from the Ottoman Empire in about 1765, the Russians have had since then, it’s their only warm water port.
Ah, but would the Russian hardliners do just enough for Russia to be able to “justify” further escalation in the way of attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure that the Geneva Convention outlaws, such as blowing up dams without a very compelling military reason to do so?
Only 1/3 of the bridge was targeted.
Even for the time of the attack, the traffic seems VERY light. (Keep in mind the considerable foreshortening of the view by the camera rear of the truck.) The traffic is much less than the quite rural region interstate highways around me at a similar time. The remaining roadway would appear more than capable of handling present vehicle traffic, esp. if controlled so that priority traffic gets, well, priority.
The most critical portion of the bridge would be the railway. It was not hit and it appears the presence of the rail cars was coincidence: The blast did set a few rail cars on fire, but apparently their fire did not at least immediately weaken the rail bridge portion enough to put it out of use. Granted, it is possible that hidden weakening occurred and long term fatigue then could well become an issue. But, then you have an almost normal maintenance & repair job merely moved up in time.
Summary: Not a devastating blow and possibly not intended to be. (Also see below.)
Vehicles going onto the Kerch bridge are scanned for explosives. This was a pretty sizeable blast: It takes such to take down a section of a major bridge from a vehicle on the roadway, even if well positioned. So if Ukraine managed to sneak a large truck bomb onto the bridge, we are looking at a major Russian security fiasco.
Then again, if the security was compromised and that was known, why not go with a really big bomb? Fill up a semi with ~45,000 lbs. of fertilizer bomb and “give ‘em a dose of real fun”, to quote Heinlein...!
Russia is saying both Ukrainian and Russian elements were involved in the attack. That is VERY interesting. Justification to crack down harder on dissent at home too.
OTOH, some of the people analyzing the videos make a pretty good case the explosion actually occurred slightly behind and to the right of the truck (outside side of the bridge) as viewed from behind. Slowing down the vids, after several viewings I think these people may be on to something. But if that’s right, while it makes internal Russian conflict less likely as a source of the attack, it opens up a lot of other questions.
There are more questions than answers here unless one is a propagandist or a sucker for the propaganda from one side or the other.