[6] Most geographers, such as Posidonius, Strabo (Geographica 11.7.4), and Ptolemy, considered the boundary between Europe and Asia to be the river Tanais (Don), which flows into the Sea of Azov from the north; an alternative view, found in the poet Cornelius Gallus was that it was the river Hypanis (Kuban), which flows into the Sea of Azov from the east, close to the Cimmerian Bosporus.

In the Second World War, the Kerch Peninsula became the scene of much desperate combat between forces of the Soviet Red Army and Nazi Germany.

Fighting frequency intensified in the coldest months of year when the strait froze over, allowing the movement of troops over the ice.

[8] After the Eastern Front stabilized in early 1943, Hitler ordered the construction of a 4.8-kilometre (3.0 mi) road-and-rail bridge across the Strait of Kerch in the spring of 1943 to support his desire for a renewed offensive to the Caucasus.

The cable railway (aerial tramway), which went into operation on 14 June 1943 with a daily capacity of one thousand tons, was only adequate for the defensive needs of the Seventeenth Army in the Kuban bridgehead.

Because of frequent earth tremors, this bridge would have required vast quantities of extra-strength steel girders, and their transport would have curtailed shipments of military material to the Crimea.

Four ships sank, six ran aground on a sandbank, and two tankers were damaged, resulting in a major oil spill and the death of 23 sailors.

Since the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War and the annexation of Crimea in 2014, however, Russian forces have forcibly established a new status quo, now being the straits' sole controlling power.

Since 1944, various bridge projects to span the strait have been proposed or attempted, always hampered by the difficult geologic and geographic configuration of the area.

[19] Russian state-backed media claims that construction of the bridge caused increases in nutrients and planktons in the waters, attracting large numbers of fish and more than 1,000 endangered Black Sea bottlenose dolphins.

[20] However, Ukraine claims that the acoustic noise and pollution from both the bridge construction and military exercises may actually be killing Black Sea dolphins.

[21] When two Ukrainian navy vessels tried to pass under the bridge to reach Mariupol in November 2018, Russian forces responded by blocking the straits with a large container ship.

[28] The Biden administration withheld the destroyers after fighting intensified between Ukrainian and Russian-backed separatist forces in an effort to alleviate the tension.

[30] In the morning of 8 October 2022 at 06:07 (Moscow time), an explosion occurred on the road portion of the Crimean Bridge, causing major damage.

[40] Oil spills from both ships began drifting towards the coast northwest of the port of Taman between the Tuzla Spit and Cape Panagiya.

The narrowness, limited depth, and turns of the main channel together with the often unpredictable effects of wind and visibility (fog) mean that there are strict procedures regulating strait transit.