On 17 July 2023, another explosion occurred adjacent to the road bridge, causing a section to collapse, Ukraine claimed both attacks.

In 1949 the Soviet government ordered the construction of a 5.969-kilometre (3 mi 1,248 yd) two-tier combined road-rail bridge (two road lanes on the upper tier and two rail tracks on the lower tier) with 40 m clearance below, connecting Yeni-Kale with Chushka Spit, but in 1950 construction was halted and a ferry line was set up instead.

[21] A different version of the fixed link, the Kerch waterworks project («Керченский гидроузел») was developed from the mid-1960s, proposing a system of dams and bridges across the strait.

[24][25] Although the idea of an international bridge linking Ukraine and Russia survived the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, the two countries failed to finalise the project.

[26] Former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov was a vocal advocate for a highway bridge across the strait, expressing hope that it would bring the Crimean people closer to Russia, both economically and symbolically.

[28][29] The issue was discussed by prime ministers of both countries in 2008,[30] and a Transport Strategy of Russia, adopted in that year, envisaged the construction of the Kerch Strait bridge as a high priority issue for the development of the Southern Federal District's transport infrastructure in the period 2016–2030, with the design ready by 2015.

[36] In early February 2014, Avtodor was instructed by the First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia to work on a feasibility study to be published in 2015.

[36] In the following months, as relations between Ukraine and Russia deteriorated, bilateral negotiations over the bridge collapsed,[37] yet Russia claimed that it expected the December 2013 deals to be honoured, and on 3 March prime minister Dmitry Medvedev signed a governmental decree to create a subsidiary of Avtodor to oversee the project.

In April 2014, following the Russian annexation of Crimea the Ukrainian government gave Russia six months' notice of its withdrawal from the now-defunct bilateral Kerch Bridge agreement.

The project was strategic, an instrumental part of Russian plans to integrate the newly annexed territory into Russia.

[42] The project aimed to shift Crimean dependence on Ukraine and reduce Kyiv's leverage,[43] remove Moscow's reliance upon inadequate sea and air links for supplying the peninsula,[44][14] and allow Russia to independently supply Crimea, whose economy has become dependent upon significant subsidies from Moscow.

In January 2015, the contract for construction of the bridge was awarded to the SGM Group, whose owner Arkady Rotenberg (reportedly a close personal friend of Putin) was internationally sanctioned in response to the Russian military's involvement in Ukraine.

[41] The Ukrainian government has actively condemned Russian construction of the bridge[48] as illegal[49] because Ukraine, "as a coastal state with regard to the Crimean Peninsula", did not give its consent to such construction,[50] and called on Russia to demolish "those parts of that structure located within temporarily occupied Ukrainian territory".

[52][53] Since December 2018 the United Nations General Assembly has repeatedly condemned the construction and opening of the bridge as "facilitating the further militarization of Crimea"[54][55] and "restricting the size of ships that can reach the Ukrainian ports on the Azov coast".

[56] Russia, on the other hand, asserted that it "shall not ask for anybody's permission to build transport infrastructure for the sake of the population of Russian regions".

According to the BBC a source in Ukraine's security service said that the 2023 explosion was caused by a Ukrainian attack with unmanned surface vessels (aquatic drones).

A Ukrainian defence official also said that Ukraine had carried out the October 2022 attack; the BBC was unable to verify the claims independently.

[61] In a speech to the Aspen Security Forum in July 2023, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the bridge a legitimate military target for Ukraine that must be "neutralized" for "feeding the war with ammunition" and "militarizing the Crimean Peninsula.

[67] The road bridge was fully opened again to traffic on 23 February 2023 according to an announcement from Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin.

[g] The Russian government's draft resolution of 1 September 2014 required the bridge to have four lanes of vehicle traffic and a double-track railway.

It showed a four-lane, flat deck highway bridge running parallel with the separate two-track railway.

[83] The "Tuzla route" was preferred over shorter variants (starting at Chushka Spit), in particular because doing otherwise would have interfered with the still operational ferry line,[84] to the effect of worsening transport communications between Russia and Crimea.

More than 200 bombs[88] and a few aeroplanes (including an Ilyushin Il-2[89] and a Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk)[90] from the World War II era were found in the area during pre-construction clearance.

[105] In October 2018, the Russian Taman Road Administration reported that as one of the railway spans was being lowered into place, it tilted and fell into the sea.

[118] The road bridge, opened in 2018, quickly overtook the Kerch Strait ferry as a preferred route of communication between Crimea and Russia.

[127] A fall in the price of retail goods in Crimea, which was expected to occur after the opening of the road bridge, did not happen.

[130][131][132] These restrictions, including Russian inspections of ships, had risen sharply since the bridge opened in May 2018, some being forced to wait for three days before being allowed through.

[134] Part of a large Greek terracotta statue was found at the Crimean Bridge construction site, during underwater digging near the Ak-Burun Cape.