Happy birthday Mr Putin!

Say hello to my little friend

After the annexation of Crimea, a grand vision was for a road and rail bridge joining Crimea to Russia. It was an ambitious project, especially for Russia’s tendency for white elephants and money stolen through corruption.

A 16km bridge would connect Crimea with Russia, the longest such bridge in Europe, but still allowing the transit of shipping through Kerch Strait to the Sea of Azov (important for both Russia and Ukraine).

To be honest, I was surprised at the speed the bridge was built, which replaced the ferry services from Krasnodarski Krai(where I lived at the time) to Crimea.

Until the current war, this was the only real way for goods and services to easily get to Crimea, other than by flights.

So what happened?

In truth, it is too early to know. Especially with Russia’s tendency to blow their own stuff up too, to create a narrative. This was almost certainly the case in the late 90s when Putin, head of the FSB, was likely to lose the race for Presidency. 200 people died in mysterious explosions, and farcial nonsense at Ryazan, and Chechnya was blamed, a new war started and Putin became president. So we can’t automatically assume Ukraine was responsible here.