You're reading: RFE/RL: Putin drives truck across bridge from Russia to Crimea

RFE/RL: Putin drives truck across bridge from Russia to Crimea

Published May 15, 2018. Updated May 15 at 4:15 pm

Russian President Vladimir Putin makes a speech during the opening ceremony of the road-and-rail Crimean Bridge over the Kerch Strait on May 15, 2018. Vladimir Putin inaugurated the 19 kilometres (12 miles) bridge consisting of parallel road and railway sections that link southern Russia to the Crimean peninsula which was annexed from Ukraine in 2014, a highly symbolic project he has personally championed. Built at a cost of 228 billion rubles ($3.69 billion), the new structure connects the southern Krasnodar region with the Crimean city of Kerch, spanning a strait between the Black Sea and the Azov Sea.

Photo by AFP

Russian President Vladimir Putin has opened the country’s newly built bridge to the annexed Crimean Peninsula, driving a truck across the controversial span.

Putin was shown live on state television at the wheel of a Kamaz truck in a convoy of vehicles that crossed the 19-kilometer-long bridge — a symbol of Moscow’s control over the Ukrainian peninsula — on May 15.