THE 18.1km railway bridge connecting Russia with Crimea was seriously damaged on October 8 following an earlymorning explosion that also destroyed part of the adjacent parallel road bridge.
Following its occupation and annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Russian government built fixed links from the Russian mainland over the Kerch Strait to the peninsula, which is otherwise not connected to Russia. The double-track rail and dual carriageway road bridges, the longest in Europe, cost about $3billion and are known simply as the ‘Crimean Bridge’. The road bridge opened in May 2018 and the rail bridge in December 2019.