A severe storm in the Kerch Strait early in the morning of Sept. 8 tore a pontoon crane from its moorings and smashed it against the newly constructed Crimean Bridge, which was opened illegally by the Kremlin in May in order to connect Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, currently under Russian occupation, with Russian territory.
Although the its crew tried hard to bring the crane under control and anchor it, the 200-ton floating construction vessel, tossed by the high waves on the Black Sea, hit a section of the bridge between Tuzla Island and the channel of the Kerch Strait, reads a message published by Russia’s Taman Federal Road Agency press service on Sept. 8.
“The crane’s arm damaged a lighting pole and bent several meters of safety railing,” the press service added.
Apparently, the crane also damaged the part of the roadway on the bridge which connects Russia to the Ukrainian city of Kerch. The Russian authorities were forced to halt traffic to Kerch in order to repair the section of the bridge.
Russia started the illegal construction of the 19-kilometer, $3-billion bridge in 2015. It connects Russia’s Rostov-On-Don Oblast with Russian-occupied Crimea across the Kerch Strait.
Ukrainian experts had warned that due to the shallowness of the Kerch Strait and the frequent stormy weather in the water channel that links the Black and Azov Seas, the illegal bridge wouldn’t last through the first winter season.
Moreover, because of its height, the bridge reduced the number of ships that can now use Ukraine’s Azov seaports of Berdyansk and Mariupol: only cargo vessels no higher than 30 meters can pass under the 33-meter-high bridge.
Russia planned to open the bridge in December, but it had already finished the highway part of the bridge in May. The same month, Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin opened the bridge, driving a large truck across it.
Soon after the bridge was opened, Russia’s Federal Security Service began to stopping and checking Ukrainian and international cargo vessels going to and from Ukrainian ports, claiming that they were searching for “possible Ukrainian saboteurs planning to blow up the bridge.”
More than 160 vessels have been stopped and searched since May, lead to rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine in the Sea of Azov, where Russia has also started to increase its naval presence.
