Analysts have devoted significant attention to the Kerch Bridge, which was Russia’s only physical connection to occupied Crimea until Moscow established a land bridge through occupied Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Luhansk in 2022. But there is another bridge that is even more militarily, economically, and politically essential to the Kremlin: the Trans-Siberian Railway Bridge in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, which connects the European and Asian parts of the Russian Federation.
The bridge’s destruction would have major geopolitical consequences. Though Ukraine’s options to target it are limited, the country’s military and intelligence planners have proven their creativity with successes like Operation Spiderweb—and there is no doubt Kyiv is aware of the bridge’s importance. The United States and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization members should therefore give greater consideration to enabling an operation to destroy or disable this bridge in Krasnoyarsk to deal a major geopolitical blow to Vladimir Putin.
A Single Point of Failure
Map 1. The Trans-Siberian Railway
Source: Authors.
Krasnoyarsk, one of Siberia’s largest cities, sits close to the geographic center of the Russian Federation and is the capital of Krasnoyarsk Krai, one of the largest federal entities in Russia (see map 1). Slicing through the region’s capital city is the world’s fifth-longest river, the Yenisei, which runs approximately 2,200 miles from southern Siberia to the Arctic Ocean. The river serves as one of the key arteries linking Siberia’s hinterland to Russia’s northern coast and the Northern Sea Route, an increasingly vital connector between Europe and Asia.
Yet there are only eight major bridges across the Yenisei, making it one of the least-crossed major rivers in the world.1 Most of these bridges are in Krasnoyarsk Krai. This is what makes the Trans-Siberian Railway Bridge at Krasnoyarsk so important: it is the railway’s only high-capacity crossing of the Yenisei River. Thus, the bridge is the critical east–west rail link connecting European Russia to central Siberia and to Pacific export terminals in the Far East.
No other bridge on the Trans-Siberian line could serve as an alternative. The so-called Bridge No. 777, located several miles north of the main bridge, connects to the Trans-Siberian Railway but is not part of the main line. Additionally, unlike the double-track main bridge, Bridge No. 777 has only a single auxiliary rail track that was not designed to handle heavy freight volumes or axle loads. The main Trans-Siberian Railway Bridge is therefore a single point of failure for Russia’s internal east–west railway system.
Precise data on the volume of freight that crosses the bridge each year is not publicly available. But Russian sources report that more than 80 million tons of freight are transported within the area of responsibility of the Krasnoyarsk Railway.2 While Russian reporting is often unreliable, this figure is likely accurate.
The freight includes products essential to Russia’s wartime economy, such as munitions, weapons, coal, metals, petroleum, and petroleum products. The bridge also serves as a central node for military movements between the Leningrad, Moscow,3 Central, and Eastern Military Districts. Furthermore, any military cargo from China or North Korea that enters Russia via the Far East and then travels inland by rail must cross the Yenisei at Krasnoyarsk. This makes the bridge one of the most vital infrastructure nodes in the Russian Federation.
The immediate consequence of a major strike on the Krasnoyarsk bridge would be the near paralysis of rail traffic moving between western Russia and eastern Siberia. Depending on the time of year and environmental conditions, the disruption could last months. Siberian winters, permafrost, ice flow, and the sheer size of the Yenisei all complicate emergency engineering solutions. Neither road nor river transport alternatives can compensate for the loss, given their comparatively low capacity and seasonal limitations. A reasonable working figure for the amount a Russian transport truck such as a KAMAZ can haul is 40 tons. Therefore, it would take an estimated two million truckloads to match the Krasnoyarsk bridge’s annual throughput. This would require about 5,500 trucks per day to move seamlessly across a handful of Yenisei River bridges and over weathered Siberian roads that are not built to sustain such capacity. Road transport is therefore not a viable alternative.
Even a temporary heavy rail crossing over the Yenisei would be an immense engineering challenge. Modern examples of emergency bridge replacements generally involve smaller spans, lighter loads, or road rather than rail traffic. And they rarely approach the load, span, and environmental complexity of a crossing like the Yenisei. Even a temporary restoration of partial capacity would take many months, and a full replacement capable of handling Trans-Siberian volumes would likely take years.
Geopolitical Consequences
Within weeks of the bridge’s destruction, Russia would face freight backlogs, shortages of key industrial materials, and severe disruptions to military supply movements from North Korea. In months, the economic impact would become severe—particularly in Russia’s eastern regions, which depend heavily on westbound freight for industry, energy, and consumer goods.
The economic shock would have political consequences for the Russian Federation. Russia’s remote regions already feel distant from the capital, both geographically and politically. The far-off regions that would be most affected have a history of low-level separatism, regionalism, and nationalism—especially Yakutia, Buryatia, and Tuva. In the case of Krasnoyarsk itself, the city has long been associated with powerful and corrupt business interests and has a history of violent organized crime. Regional crime leaders would likely become frustrated with Moscow’s inability to rectify the situation, creating further headaches for the Kremlin. These disruptions would also significantly degrade Russia’s ability to wage war against Ukraine, as Moscow relies heavily on Chinese dual-use imports and North Korean military hardware.
Managing the economic and political fallout of a major disruption while working to sustain a large-scale war against Ukraine would create a major political problem for Putin.
Military Options to Target the Bridge
The destruction of such a strategic asset deep in Russian territory would be an extremely complex operation. But Ukraine has repeatedly proven its ability to innovate under pressure.4 Most impressively, it has rapidly developed offensive robotic aerial capabilities that can strike deep inside Russia and target the Russian defense industrial base and hydrocarbon industry, which are vital to sustaining Putin’s war machine. Unfortunately, even Ukraine’s newly developed long-range strike options fall far short of the required range to strike Krasnoyarsk, which is about 2,400 miles from the closest point in Ukraine.5 Striking the bridge will therefore require Ukraine to once again employ significant battlefield ingenuity.
In a June mission referred to as Operation Spiderweb, Ukraine covertly launched unmanned aerial systems from tractor trailers to strike key strategic aviation assets at multiple Russian air bases. In just a few hours, a significant percentage of Russia’s nuclear-capable strategic air wing was damaged or destroyed.
And in November 2025, Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) reported that it carried out an attack that derailed a freight train on the Trans-Siberian Railway in Khabarovsk Krai, 3,700 miles inside Russia.6 The mission’s official aim was to degrade Russian weapons and ammunition movements, including rail shipments linked to arms supplies originating from North Korea.7 In the same month, pro-Ukraine partisan groups conducted sabotage on the occupied Crimean railway routes.
Ukraine therefore has two primary options:
- Operation Spiderweb 2.0. Ukraine could once again covertly insert a large number of unmanned systems deep inside Russia to generate ambush and disruption capabilities at the required scale. In addition to the aerial option Ukraine has already demonstrated, the Yenisei River presents maritime options for employing these unmanned systems. The GUR and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) are experienced in conducting such covert missions.
- Traditional sabotage. Partisan or clandestine networks inside Russia could again take advantage of key vulnerabilities like the river barges that pass beneath the bridge or the trains that travel over it. With sufficient creativity, patience, and ambition, operatives could deploy and remotely detonate explosives as traffic crosses the bridge. There is no doubt that Ukraine’s intelligence experts have identified and developed other sabotage options since the Khabarovsk strike.
Even with Ukraine’s track record of success in such complex operations, it is important to keep in mind that destroying or severely damaging a railway bridge is not the same as derailing trains or destroying grounded aircraft. Bridges are highly hardened structures with layered defenses that require sophisticated fusing, precise timing, and powerful explosive forces to destroy. But it is far from impossible.
This is where Ukraine’s Western partners could play a role. The US and its allies could covertly transfer certain defense technologies or equipment and provide intelligence on the bridge and its surrounding area. An operation to destroy the bridge would still have just a low-to-mid probability of success. But the potential impact is extremely high, making it a worthwhile mission for the United States and Ukraine’s European partners to support.
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its fourth year, and as peace talks again threaten to stall, the Trump administration should think creatively and boldly about how to give Ukraine the upper hand. The destruction of the Trans-Siberian Railway Bridge is one such creative option.