Crimea Has Officially Been Connected to Russia - Putin to Open Kerch Strait Bridge Today
Vladimir Putin will attend the Kerch Strait Bridge opening ceremony. The Kremlin press office has confirmed that the president will see the opening of the Joint Traffic Control Center. On Wednesday morning, May 16th, car and bus traffic will be opened to both sides of the bridge. Now the century's main construction site is being polished.
Our correspondent Olga Armyakova followed all of the stages from the first pile to the final preparations before the opening.
It's the kilometer zero of the Crimean Bridge where the transport passage over the Kerch Strait starts. This road safely connects two coasts of one country. These 19 kilometers can be seen even from space. The builders seem to have done the impossible within the unthinkable, record-breaking period of 2 years and 3 months.
The president carefully followed all stages of this colossal construction. Vladimir Putin first mentioned a secure connection between Crimea and the mainland back in March 2014 right after the referendum. And in the spring of 2016, he personally assessed its progress on-site, viewing it from a helicopter.
Vladimir Putin: "The bridge was first proposed under Tsar Nicholas II in 1910. The first project was drafted. Our predecessors, obviously, realized the importance of a bridge between Crimea and the Caucasus. They sought to implement the project for a long time. I hope we'll fulfill this historic mission".
The first workers on both sides of the Kerch Strait were not construction workers, but EOD units. It was unsafe to build anything on the site of fierce fighting in WWII. Archeologists worked there too, finding about 1 million valuable items in two years.
The beginning of the construction of the century. The first piles were plunged at a record-breaking depth of over 300 feet through a thick bed of silt when it was snowing and icing, raining and foggy, even stormy. Then equipment stopped, but people continued to work: about 10,000 people, around the clock.
Arkady Rotenberg, Stroygazmontazh CEO: "We faced many difficulties. I never imagined that I would once touch such a large project as the Crimean Bridge. Now I dream of driving through it and, I guess, enjoying the trip very much".
The road section of the Crimean Bridge, which was constructed by all of this huge country, is ready. What many generations had dreamed of — the linking of the Crimean and the Taman coasts — was completed within only 816 days. Our film crew followed the progress of the construction of the century. Tuzla Spit — it's looming over there — will be linked to the Crimean peninsula via the bridge. These are construction cranes. A temporary bridge for transporting construction supplies and equipment is being built. These two fairway arches will raise the bridge over the clear-way.
This unprecedented and unparalleled maritime operation has been completed. It will be the road of the future. Here are the first 600 feet of the pavement. It's the first layer which is over 2 inches thick.
This new footage shows the scale of the work that's been done better than words could. On May 16th, at 5:30 AM, the first cars and buses will cross the bridge. Now one can get from one coast to the other in just 15 minutes. The journey to the peninsula's resort was never so short. The Crimean Bridge will last for centuries.
Olga Armyakova, Konstantin Morozov and Nikita Kalchenko for Vesti from the Kerch Strait.