Drang Nah Mosten

Vladimir Putin officially opened the bridge over the Kerch Strait between the Krasnodar Territory and the annexed Crimea. It is reported by TASS.

Putin drove along the bridge from the Kuban to the Crimea at the wheel of KamAZ at the head of a column of about 35 cars involved in construction: dump trucks, cement trucks, tankers, autocrans, etc. Together with the head of state, Alexander Ostrovsky, general director of the company SSM -Most, was sitting in the cockpit, construction contractor. This company is the structure of Stroygazmontazh, owned by oligarch Arkady Rotenberg, Putin's friend.

Upon arrival in Crimea, Putin took part in a rally-concert. The builders of the bridge are, in particular, Larisa Dolina, Oleg Gazmanov, Grigory Leps, Dima Bilan, Valeria.

Regular car traffic on the bridge will be opened on May 16. Meanwhile, the opening of the railway part is scheduled only for the next year .

President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, on his FB page, called the construction of the Kerch bridge "another evidence of neglect of international law from the Kremlin." “Especially cynical,” the president emphasized, “to open the bridge on the eve of the next anniversary of the deportation of the Crimean Tatar people by the Stalinist regime.”

Poroshenko recalled that in the lawsuit of Ukraine to Russia, filed in the International Arbitration Court in the Hague in connection with the violation of the UN Convention on the Law of 1982, the illegal construction of the Crimean bridge was also mentioned.

“The bridge will definitely need the invaders when they will hastily leave our Crimea,” the President of Ukraine concluded.

At the end of April, the chairman of the Majlis of the Crimean Tatar people, Refat Chubarov, in an interview with the Observer, said that after the liberation of Crimea, the bridge should become "part of the great indemnity of the damage that Russia caused to Ukraine."

The EU foreign policy service called the construction of the bridge "another violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine." "The construction of the bridge was aimed at further forced integration of the illegally annexed peninsula into Russia and its isolation from Ukraine, which it is included," said the representative of the diplomatic service of the European Union Maya Kosyankich.

In early May, it became known that the Netherlands prosecutor’s office is investigating seven local firms suspected of violating sanctions against Russia. According to the plot of the case, these companies supplied heavy equipment for the construction of the Crimean bridge. Companies company managers believed that, working only on the Russian side of the Kerch Strait, they do not violate the sanctions regime. However, if firms are found guilty of violations of sanctions, their actions can be regarded as undermining the territorial integrity of Ukraine. In this case, companies face fines of up to 820 thousand euros, and managers - fines up to 82 thousand euros or prisoners of up to six years.