Three days ago, on the 8th of October, there was an explosion on the Crimean Bridge, which is the longest bridge in Europe, built by Russia after the annexation of Crimea, but what is the history of the Crimean Bridge, and what does this mean for the current Russian invasion of Ukraine?
Despite Russia’s sudden invasion of Ukraine earlier this year, the Ukraine - Russia conflict has been going on for a much longer time. In fact, in March 2014, Russia tried to illegally invade and annex Crimea, following the Revolution of Dignity, in which people wanted to be closer to the European Union and to protest against the corruption in the government. Russia began the invasion on 27 February, in which Russian soldiers (first denied by Russia, but later confirmed) captured various locations in Crimea. After that, a referendum was hastily hosted by the Crimean Supreme Council - something similar to what has been happening in other Russian occupied territories of Ukraine today - in which people could only either join Russia or make Crimea independent (voting for Crimea to be part of Ukraine was not an option). It was reported that 96.7% of the 83% turnout voted to join Russia, although the authenticity of these results is highly doubted.
After the annexation, the work on the bridge started.
There were already attempts to build the bridge before the annexation of Ukraine, starting from 1943, but lots of these bridges were often destroyed and did not last long - they were often badly designed and not meant to be temporary structures. There were also talks from both parties (Ukraine and Russia) about building the bridge afterwards and it was almost going to happen, but due to the annexation, it meant that the relations between both countries became worse and talk about building the bridge stopped.
However, despite this, Russia decided to build the Crimean Bridge by itself and started working on the Bridge in 2014. The bridge is actually two bridges - one is a railway and the other is a road so that cars can go. It is around kilometres long and costs more than $3.5 million.
Recently, there was an explosion on the bridge, which is presumed to be caused by a lorry explosion, but the bridge is soon to reopen for road traffic. Currently, it is not known who started the attack, but the attack on the bridge, which has been seen as Russia’s claim to Crimea, has harmed Putin’s, and Russia’s, reputation, since they are already losing ground and territory in Ukraine. As the bridge was used to ship military resources as well, it could mean that the Russian army will be weakened more, due to lack of supplies, but resources and supplies could still come by road and by sea. However, the attack has also led Russia to attack an apartment block in the region of Zaporizhzhya, with 12 confirmed dead. This shows that Russia is trying to make sure that they look strong despite the recent occurrences, such as Ukraine taking back land and the attack on the bridge, and it could possibly mean that they may get more ruthless in their attacks as they try and stop the Ukrainian army until Winter.
