Crimean Bridge opens amid Ukrainian, Western condemnation

The Crimean Bridge,
linking the illegally occupied peninsula with the Russian mainland, was opened
to public traffic the early morning of May 16. It is capable of handling 40,000
vehicles per day, 14 million passengers per year and 13 million tons of truck
traffic annually. Construction began in 2015 with the budget swelling ten times
to about USD 4 bln, news reports said. Traffic on the 19-kilometer bridge, 11.5
kilometers of which are above land, is limited to 90 km/hour with stops
forbidden. Two lanes are in each direction with rail traffic to be launched in
December 2019. Ten monitoring points feed traffic video and sensor data to a
central dispatcher situated on the bridge’s eastern end on the Taman Peninsula.

Ukrainian officials
repeated their condemnations of the bridge, reminding the public that it
violates not only international law, but numerous articles of the UN Convention
on the Law of the Sea. They also cited estimates by Ukrainian scientists that
the bridge will inflict at least USD 380 mln worth of damage to the ecology of
the Azov and Black seas, as well as the 3.5-sq. km. Tuzla Island over which it
spans. Ukraine’s Infrastructure Ministry is preparing a list of sanctions
against all companies that participated in the bridge’s construction, including
seven EU firms, the pravda.com.ua news site reported. The government is also
planning a lawsuit against Russia to recover economic damages suffered by
Ukrainian ports. Ukrainian steelmakers stand to lose at least 1 mln tons of
metal exports annually owing to the bridge, the Infrastructure Ministry
estimated.

The U.S. State
Department also condemned the Crimean Bridge, stressing that it violates
international law partly because it was built without the Ukrainian
government’s permission. “The bridge represents not only an attempt by Russia
to solidify its unlawful seizure and its occupation of Crimea, but also impedes
navigation by limiting the size of ships that can transit the Kerch Strait, the
only path to reach Ukraine’s territorial waters in the Sea of Azov,” its May 15
statement said, adding that it has already imposed sanctions on some of those
involved in the project. Meanwhile, the EU issued a statement in which it
“continues to condemn the illegal annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol by Russia
and will not recognize this violation of international law.”

Zenon Zawada: The Crimean Bridge is a propaganda
victory for Putin’s Russia, where mass media are milking its opening in news
reports to the fullest extent. Yet the cost of this victory will continue to
mount as Ukrainian entities can expect to win many decisions in Western courts
that reward large sums of damages incurred from the bridge’s illegal
construction. We have already reported on the significant losses in trade that
the Ukrainian economy will suffer. So we expect many of eastern Ukraine’s
biggest manufacturers will sue the Russian government to recover these losses
(which, conversely, would create another incentive for Russia to expand its
military occupation of Ukraine). The mounting economic damages that Russia will
have to pay Ukraine will add to its debt burden and force its isolation from
the global community even further, raising the risk for expanded military
aggression.

A separate issue is whether the Crimean Bridge will stand for a long
duration, considering that even a few Russian geologists have questioned the
bridge’s potential for safety and sturdiness, according to the segodnya.ua.
Besides being constructed on land that largely consists of floating clay, the
entire Kerch Strait zone was described by a Russian geologist as a “seismic
region” replete with harsh terrain, fault lines and volcanic activity.