KERCH, Crimea — The looming bridge is the best show in town.
Every two weeks, Nikolai Ench, a retired sailor, and his wife, Olga, scale the scrublands above Kerch in their white Toyota truck to marvel at the colossal engineering feat inching its way across the strait separating Crimea from the Russian mainland.
“This is the first time they can build something like this in Russia,’’ said Ench, 67, who even spent an entire night in August staring at the bridge through binoculars until construction workers slotted the first of two arches into place at what he said was exactly 7:27 a.m. “We feel a certain pride.’’
Expected to open to traffic in December 2018, the $7 billion bridge project is likely to come more freighted with symbolism than with actual vehicles. It is the latest in a series of megaprojects of the type much beloved by President Vladimir Putin.
“It is showing the world the great things it can do,’’ said Ekaterina Schulmann, a political scientist at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. “The government might not be able to provide safety, good health care, and education, but it can provide big projects. If you cannot do bread, you can at least do circuses.’’
The bridge carries even weightier symbolism because much of the world considers Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea illegitimate.
“It signifies in the most visible way the connection between Crimea and Russia, that Crimea is part of Russia, connected to it by a solid bridge — that is as symbolic as it gets,’’ Schulmann said.
Putin has taken a keen public interest in the project, not least because the annexation of the Black Sea peninsula buoyed his political fortunes domestically by resurrecting the image of Russia as a muscular power.
In Crimea, billboards bearing his picture and a quote from him lauding the “historic mission’’ of building the bridge loom over various potholed highways.
When the project was first announced, however, it seemed that no Russian company wanted to touch it.
There were extraordinary engineering challenges, and anything involving Crimea carried the risk of international sanctions. Even more daunting, perhaps, the ultimate project supervisor, known to be a demanding boss, was laying out a rigorous construction schedule.
“The bridge itself is difficult, the scale is huge, and it is tough to meet the deadline,’’ said Oleg Skvortsov, a bridge specialist who led a 50-member expert advisory council.
Into the breach stepped Arkady Rotenberg, a billionaire who has made a career of taking on Putin’s pet projects.
Spanning the Kerch Strait with a bridge has been proposed repeatedly for more than 100 years and even tried once before, but some combination of costs, war, and Mother Nature doomed every effort.
The strait runs between two mountain ranges, sending fierce winds howling through its narrow confines.
Ice floes crash through during the spring thaw and the area is prone to earthquakes.
For the bridge to overcome those conditions, thousands upon thousands of pylons were driven into the seabed for stability. In addition, various parts were built using aerodynamics akin to an airplane wing, ensuring that the winds flow around the structure.
