Hundreds of cars queue on Crimean Bridge
Queues of hundreds of cars have appeared on the bridge after reverse traffic had been allowed on the Crimean Bridge, and students from the occupied part of Zaporizhzhia Oblast were driven to the bridge to help drivers in the traffic jam.
Source: Russian service BBC, Crimea.Reality
Details: It is reported that the queues for the Crimean Bridge increased to hundreds of cars on each side after reverse traffic was opened on one of the lanes on the night of 17-18 July.
About 400 cars are waiting in line from Taman, Krasnodar Krai, and 320 from Kerch, Crimea.
At night, reverse traffic on the Crimean Bridge was partially restored in the rightmost lane of the Taman-Kerch direction.
The Center for National Resistance reports that Russia is driving students from the occupied part of Zaporizhzhia Oblast to help drivers in the traffic jam on the highway to Crimea.
Quote: "All this is presented as a youth initiative, but all pseudo-social movements like Young Guard and other invaders’ entities, to which young people are forcibly enrolled by the Russians under various pretexts, were instructed to put people along the highway."
Background: The Russians stated that they expect to launch two-way traffic of the Kerch bridge one lane at a time. On 17 July, at midnight, the first test trucks were supposed to be launched – and if everything went well, then from 01:00, they were supposed to allow passenger cars to pass.
The Russians also said they will launch two-way traffic on one side of the Crimean Bridge on 15 September and the other in November; one bridge span cannot be restored.
Read also: New satellite images show damage to Crimean Bridge
Background:
- On the morning of 17 July, Sergey Aksenov, the so-called "head" of the Russian-occupied Crimea, said that an "emergency" occurred on the Crimean Bridge; due to this, traffic on the bridge had been stopped. Russian Telegram channels reported that a span of the bridge fell down.
- Sources of Ukrainska Pravda reported that the night attack on the Crimean bridge was a special operation of the Security Service of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Navy. It was noted that the bridge was attacked with the help of surface drones. Later, the version about two surface drones was announced by the Kremlin-aligned Russian news agency RIA Novosti with reference to the National Anti-Terrorist Committee of the Russian Federation.
- Earlier, Russian media reported that the Crimean Bridge is guarded from the sky by fighters and underwater divers and battle dolphins.
- Russian dictator Vladimir Putin promised Russia would retaliate for the attack on the Crimean Bridge.
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