A section of the Kerch railway bridge plunged into the water as it was being put in place on Oct. 4, halting work on the illegal link between Russia and Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimea.
The Kremlin-controlled news website Ria Novosti reported that accident happened over open water between the Tuzla Split and Tuzla Island. No one was injured during the incident, the media said.
It will take the company constructing the bridge a month to repair the damage and install a new railway bridge section, but the opening of the railway bridge is not expected to be delayed, Ria Novosti said.
A screenshot from the video on Kerch railway bridge accident on Oct. 4. (Photo by Kerch.fm) (kerch.fm)
The railway part of the bridge is scheduled to open in December 2019. The Russians finished the road part of the bridge in May, with Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin opening the link by driving a construction truck across it.
This is not the first accident to hit the newly built bridge: A storm tore a pontoon crane from its moorings and smashed it against the bridge on Sept. 8. The incident damaged a lighting pole, Russia’s Taman Federal Road Agency press service said.
Russia started the illegal construction of the 19-kilometer, $3-billion bridge in 2015. It stretches across the Kerch Strait from Russia’s Rostov-On-Don Oblast to the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory of Crimea.
In addition to illegally building a bridge on Ukraine’s territory, Russia’s Federal Security Service regularly stops and checks Ukrainian and international cargo vessels going to and from Ukrainian ports on the Azov Sea. The Russians claim to be searching for “possible Ukrainian saboteurs planning to blow up the bridge,” the Kyiv Post reported in September.
The Ukrainian government planned to send to the National Security and Defense Council in August a list of 19 legal entities involved in the construction of the bridge so that they can be placed on the international sanctions list.
