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The Russian occupiers in Crimea should leave the peninsula before winter - Ukraine has deliberately left the bridge undamaged just for them. The question is whether Putin will allow them to go home.

The bridge staying up is the pressure point: Moscow has to keep feeding and defending Crimea through a corridor it can't fully protect, and winter makes that bill worse. Leaving the exits closed turns the fortress into a liability.

Crimea's occupation runs on that grid: air defense nodes, rail, the fleet. The cost of the project coming due darkens it. Moscow built the peninsula into a fortress and left the power supply as the weak link.