REUTERS
A complex sea current and geological foundation do not allow ensuring that the bridge structure and its pillars are reliable and permanent.
Ukrainian Architect George Dukhovychnyi says the Crimean Bridge may collapse at any time as its construction was the Kremlin's political adventure rather than the implementation of an expedient and durable infrastructure project with application of advanced construction technologies.
"What Russia has done in the Kerch Strait [construction of the Crimean Bridge] is mainly a political adventure… as it was with the USSR, and now with the Russian Federation. I know that there is a very problematic geological situation in the Kerch Strait Bridge area. There is no solid ground foundation. It's impossible to reach the continental layers by drilling because they lie at great depths. Moreover, a complex sea current and geological foundation do not allow ensuring that the bridge structure and its pillars are strong and permanent. And the fact that parts of the bridge began to collapse in less than a year is evidence that the bridge has no adequate foundation, which is very important," he told the Segodnya newspaper on October 12.
According to the expert, the Crimean Bridge has so far been failing to tackle the required operation conditions, while "the threats to the safety and lives of people really persist, and they are not just potential."
"In construction, especially in building overpasses and bridges, the very precedent of the fall of a part of one of the bearing elements is evidence that the whole structure is unreliable and that it may collapse at any moment. For example, the Channel Tunnel has been functioning quite normally for a long time, while some pedestrian underpasses in Kyiv get flooded amid ordinary rainfall," the architect said, adding that post-Soviet countries, including the Russian Federation, are still at the Stone Age level in terms of applying advanced technologies.
As reported earlier, on October 4, the span of the railway section of the Crimean Bridge slid into water amid installation works.