Today Crimea welcomes Vladimir Putin. He is going to visit the Kerch Bridge. Putin will inspect the construction works between the main part of Russia and the peninsula. The project of the bridge across the Kerch Strait was approved by the Main State Expertise of Russia a month ago, after which the main construction works began. The 19-km bridge will be the longest bridge in Russia. Moreover, the President will hold an operative meeting on the socio-economic development of Sevastopol and Crimea, which is celebrating the second anniversary of rejoining Russia.
“The referendum of March 16th 2014 provided peace, first of all in Crimea and in Sevastopol. That's the most important thing. Of course, during this period we managed to do a lot in terms of actually having one legislative and legal framework, and in the course of two years we have built completely different spaces, which we had to build and implement. In particular, first of all, this was associated with passportization, with land relations, with registries. That is, we had to once again recreate the entire volume of information, which actually became unavailable after March 18th,” a member of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs, senator from Sevastopol, Olga Timofeyeva, said.
According to her, “at some point, Crimea practically became an island, completely cut off from the land. We constantly feel some threats from the [Ukrainian] land: blockades, the water blockade, the energy blockade, direct threats that are constantly heard from the Ukrainian state. But we can get through it. Crimea lives, builds, makes plans, and implements those plans.”
The senator stated that huge infrastructural transformations are on the agenda now: “During 23 years of being a part of Ukraine, global infrastructure projects were not implemented. Now we come to the fact that we are starting to really work them out. There are roads, the recovery of all the networking, communications, a restart of many resorts and the whole infrastructure related to the recreation of citizens. There is healthcare, which must be restored from scratch, because both in Crimea and in Sevastopol modern health facilities that meet modern high-tech level have not been built. Now we are arriving at a constructive agenda. This is what will be implemented soon. This also entails opportunities for Crimeans who feel themselves to be part of greater Russian. Opportunities in the literal sense of word, starting from expanses and spaces, and ending with those personal needs, which every human being has. There is education, travel, realization in professional terms. We are home and that says everything.”
