Putin opens Crimea link via the longest bridge in Europe

VLADIMIR PUTIN has opened a bridge that will serve as Russia’s first road link to Crimea, a symbolic victory for him that will also reduce the annexed peninsula’s isolation.

The project completes what Mr Putin has framed as Russia’s historic reunification with Crimea four years after it was seized from Ukraine in the wake of a pro-western revolution.

To christen the bridge, which at almost 12 miles is the longest in Europe, Mr Putin got behind the wheel of an orange Kamaz lorry for a live television broadcast and cruised across to Crimea.

“I congratulate you on this historic holiday,” the president told workers. “It’s historic because in different epochs, back in the times of our father the tsar, people dreamed about building this bridge. Finally thanks to your talent and work, this project, this wonder, has been completed.”

Mr Putin said that the four lanes of traffic would accommodate 14million people a year, bringing Crimea and Russia “closer to each other” and allowing the peninsula to grow at a “new economic tempo”. A twin railway bridge has been postponed until December 2019.

Built at a cost of £2.7 billion, the bridge is the kind of no-expensespared patriotic megaproject that has marked Mr Putin’s rule. The president, whose approval ratings shot above 80 per cent with Crimea’s annexation, personally oversaw it.

The bridge may offer some relief for residents of the peninsula, who largely supported annexation but have suffered high prices for food and goods after trade from Ukraine was cut off.

Mikhail Blinkin, a transport expert, and others have argued that expanding the existing ferry service could have solved the transport problem for a fraction of the cost, but, as he told news site Krym Realii, that would “not say anything about Russia as a world power”.

Spanning the notoriously windy Kerch Strait was not only a geopolitical victory, but a feat of engineering. The bridge relies on piles running up to 350ft (100m) deep to cross four miles of open water. As many as 15,000 workers at a time toiled on the 27-month project, while twin 6,000-ton central arches were built on shore and then moved into place by boats.