Posted on 05/16/2018 12:20:40 AM PDT by BBell
Ukraine, which along with most of the international community has not recognized Russia's annexation of Crimea, condemns the project
KERCH – President Vladimir Putin drew condemnation from the US, Europe and Ukraine on Tuesday, May 15, after he opened a new bridge linking mainland Russia and Moscow-annexed Crimea by driving a truck across it to the peninsula.
Putin dressed in jeans and a casual jacket was shown by Russian state television behind the wheel of a construction truck to drive 19 kilometers (12 miles) across the bridge, which links the Taman peninsula in southern Russia to Ukraine's Crimea, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014.
"I want to sincerely congratulate you with this remarkable, festive and, in the full sense of the word, historic day," Putin told workers upon arrival on the Crimean side of the bridge.
"In different historical eras, even under the tsar, people were dreaming of building this bridge," Putin told cheering workers.
He was referring to Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II, who first proposed such a bridge, but the outbreak of World War I prevented it going ahead.
Another unsuccessful attempt was made in the 1930s under Joseph Stalin. During World War II the occupying Nazis also began building a bridge but abandoned the project.
Putin, who was re-elected for a 4th Kremlin term in March extending his long rule, pledged to build more of "such projects" across Russia.
The Crimean Bridge overtakes Lisbon's Vasco da Gama Bridge as the longest in Europe.
Built at a cost of 228 billion rubles ($3.7 billion), the new structure connects the southern Krasnodar region with the Crimean city of Kerch, spanning a strait between the Black and Azov seas.
(Excerpt) Read more at rappler.com ...
CRIMEAN BRIDGE. Russian President Vladimir Putin walks away from a construction truck after he drove the vehicle across the new 19 kilometres (12 miles) road-and-rail Crimean Bridge over the Kerch Strait that links mainland Russia to Moscow-annexed Crimea during the opening ceremony on May 15, 2018. Photo by Alexander Nemenov/AFP
Sure would be shame if that bridge fell down - accidentally, of course.
The truck is KAMAZ, a major Russian truck manufacturer.
It takes 15 minutes to cross the bridge from the Taman peninsula to Kerch in Crimea.
And of course Putin is famous for his macho stunts.
KAMAZ manufactures some awesome trucks. They have done very well at the Dakar rally as well as in Siberia.
For Russia, this is a historic moment. They don’t care what we think.
Bridge falling down salute....with Putin and his pals in the middle!
The question for NATO, thanks to that idiot, Barrack Obama , is:
” IS THIS A BRIDGE TOO FAR?”
Capturing Sevastopol isn’t easy. It succumbed to the Nazis only after a siege of several months.
And getting tanks and amored vehicle over the Strait Bridge - that a value-rich target.
I don’t see the West succeeding where Napoleon and Hitler failed.
I don’t see the West succeeding where Napoleon and Hitler failed.>>>
Neither do I.
But that bridge would’nt last very long if the SHTF.
Bkmk
And invasions from the East always worked out.
I think the west’s near-hysterical response to the bridge verges on the ridiculous. Everyone has wanted a bridge there, from Nicholas II to now.
And the Ukraine is not going to get the Crimea back; Russia’s annexation or liberation or whatever is a done deal.
And we have enough to do fixing the problems of Syria, Iraq, the Balkans, Kurdistan, etc. etc.(sarc/off)
(John Adams said while we support liberty for all peoples, we are custodians only of our own. Amen.)
> And the Ukraine is not going to get the Crimea back; Russia’s annexation or liberation or whatever is a done deal. <
It’s worth noting that the Crimea was Russian for centuries. Then in 1954 it was simply given to the Ukraine by the Soviet government.
There are places where it makes sense to push back against Putin. The Crimea is not one of them.
The US would do well to formally recognize the accession...it would make an awesome bargaining chip in a future rapprochement effort.
Are we advocating for war with the RF now? Because that’s what an attack on this bridge would constitute. Incidentally, the Russian Navy has created a new unit whose sole mandate is to patrol the Kerch Strait and protect the bridge.
The bridge itself is an incredible accomplishment for Russia...on-time and under budget, to boot. I’ll likely to take a drive down to see/cross it before the end of the summer.
Secure access to the Black Sea has been a Russian project for the last 400 years, and Russia has controlled it for the last 300 years. Regardless of what you think of Putin, telling a Russian that Crimea isn’t Russian is like telling an American that Texas should belong to Mexico.
The taking of Crimea says absolute zero about Russian aggression in the rest of Europe. Unlike the Baltic states, Belarus, Poland, etc., Crimea was ALWAYS part of Russia since before there was ever anywhere known as Ukraine or The Ukraine. Crimea had previously belonged to the Muslim Turks. Crimea is over 90% Russia, and those Russians’ ancestors trace back to Crimea for centuries. They speak Russian.
Crimea only became associated with the Ukraine as a result of an internal administrative move aimed at increasing the Russian population of the Ukraine SSR, while seeming to empower Ukraine. If followed the rest of Ukraine in going independent from Russia on the precondition that it would remain autonomous within Ukraine, have Russian as its official language, etc. Those promises were revoked.
While Kiev was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Empire/Confederation, Crimea was Russian.
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