As long as any vehicle (except, like, airplanes) can pass over the bridge, it does not count as destroyed. If the bridge is destroyed but successfully repaired before 1/1/24 so that vehicles can cross it again, it does not count as destroyed.
This is question #6 in the Astral Codex Ten 2023 Prediction Contest. The contest rules and full list of questions are available here. Market will resolve according to Scott Alexander’s judgment, as given through future posts on Astral Codex Ten.
My case here:
Will a country back Crimea with long range weapons this year? .7
Will Crimea successfully use them on the bridge this year? .4
Will the bridge get rebuilt? .1
=~.25
Come at me
I think that the most likely way for this to happen is for Ukraine to conduct a counteroffensive in Zaporizhzhia oblast that retakes Berdiansk or some other section of the Azov Sea coast. Ukraine would then be able to much more easily target the bridge with medium range missiles (perhaps Neptune?). The distance from Ukrainian positions to the bridge would be cut in half, and it would be entirely over water, which makes it harder to place air defenses.
Conditional on Ukraine retaking Berdiansk, I think that this market should be about 80%. Ukraine retaking Berdiansk by the end of 2023 is maybe 50%, which would make BTE's bet reasonable. I could see the case for retaking Berdiansk to be less than 50% - but I could see some other possible ways for the Kerch Strait bridge to be destroyed.
Upon reading the resolution criteria, this seems like a high bar. We saw how keen russia was to repair the bridge when damaged. Even if this bridge was severely damaged, russia would likely unsafely patch up the bridge, as a tokenstic effort to ensure some traffic was passing over the bridge. Even if that amount of traffic wasn't significant, it would still resolve this market negative. I am on <10%
