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Kerch Strait Bridge opens to road traffic
Summary
A retrospective on the opening of the road section of a bridge linking Russia with annexed Crimea.
What did it mean to open a bridge across the Kerch Strait in an annexed territory? On 15 May 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin opened the road section of the Kerch Strait Bridge, a road-and-rail link about 19 kilometres (12 miles) long that connects Crimea with Russia.
The opening was reported at the time as taking place in annexed Crimea, and that setting defines how the project was seen from Kyiv and beyond. The bridge stood on a peninsula that Russia had occupied and annexed in 2014.
The setting
Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula in February and March 2014, occupied it and then annexed it after a referendum that was illegitimate. This came amid the uncertainty that followed Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity. Later analysis treated the invasion as the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian war.
What the opening showed
The road section was the part opened on 15 May 2018. Under the account given at the time, the structure physically tied the peninsula to the Russian mainland. Its opening was presented as a milestone for Moscow, while for Ukraine it stood on territory it considered its own.
The ceremony was a single day's event, and its wider consequences lay ahead. What the date records is simple: a 19-kilometre crossing, opened by Russia's president, in a territory Russia had taken from Ukraine four years earlier.
