When Vladimir Putin personally led a fleet of construction trucks over a new $3.7bn bridge spanning the Kerch Strait last May, he was sending a clear message that Crimea was now very much part of Russia.
The bridge, Mr Putin declared, would bring “all of us closer together” and help the economy of Crimea, which the west said was illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014, to “develop at a new pace and in new ways”.
