When Putin boarded a train across the sea bridge from Crimea earlier this week, analysts considered it a display of determination to keep the peninsula.

"This is another message from Putin that Russia will never give up Crimea," Andrei Kolesnikov, an expert from the Carnegie Moscow Center, said of President Vladimir Putin's December 23 opening of the new ice railway bridge. across the Kerch Strait. "He proves that Crimea is ours, is our territory and we are developing this territory."

Starting from the Taman peninsula, Krasnodar region, southern Russia, a 19 km long railway bridge crosses the Kerch Strait to Crimea, which was once the main base of Russia's Black Sea fleet. This is the longest railway bridge in Europe, parallel to the road bridge opened in May 2018.

In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine through a referendum, but was not recognized by the United States, the European Union and imposed economic sanctions. The new railway bridge also suffers the same criticism as the road bridge. The European Union condemns it as "another step in forcing the illegal merger of the peninsula".

Ukrainian officials said they had started an investigation alleging illegal trains carrying people across the Ukrainian border. The Crimea Office of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky issued a statement saying that "it is an act of violating Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, showing that the Kremlin disregards the principles and standards of national law. ".

Location of the bridge across the Kerch Strait. Graphics: Russia Briefing.

But because Russia was willing to face harsh Western sanctions and not change its position on Crimea, Zelensky could hardly do much. He has pledged during the campaign to "regain lost lands", including the Donbass in eastern Ukraine, where fighting between government forces and separatists over the past five years has led to at least 13,000 people were killed.

After his first talks with Putin in Paris earlier this month, Zelensky once again asserted "Donbass, like Crimea, is Ukrainian territory".

"What else can he say?" Said Alexei Makarkin, vice president of the Center for Political Technology, a research group in Moscow. "If you were a political strategist for President Zelensky, what else could you advise him to say when he is being criticized for yielding to Russia?"

Unlike in Donbass, where a prisoner exchange is expected to take place before the end of this year, the President of Ukraine admitted that Kiev has no specific plan to regain control of Crimea from Russia. Zelensky said that he needed help from other countries to do that.

Russia's opening of a second bridge to the Crimean peninsula made Zelensky's calculation impossible. Some have opposed his deal with Putin to ease tensions in the Donbass, including withdrawing Ukrainian government troops from the front lines and holding elections in separatist-controlled areas.

"This is a headache for President Zelensky's image and credit rating," Kolesnikov said. "This has done a lot of damage to Zelensky, but it is a fact.

Grand Service Express, which operates the rail service to Crimea, plans to open eight new train routes from Russian provinces to the region when the tourist season begins in May 2020.

The two routes go directly from Moscow and St. Petersburg. Petersburg to Crimea without passing through Ukraine territory was put into operation at the end of December. The first train from St. Petersburg. Petersburg to Crimea, Sevastopol, departs on December 23 with a ticket price of 3,650 rubles (US $ 57), while the trip from Moscow to Crimea's capital Simferopol departs the following day with a ticket price of 2,966 rubles (US $ 46).

Rostourism, the Russian national tourism agency, forecasts tourist traffic to Crimea will increase by 20% thanks to the railway. Meanwhile, Russian Railways is studying the possibility of using Taman port to transport cargo such as coal to India through the Suez Canal.

"This is a signal that Russia is investing heavily to connect Crimea with the rest of Russia. Russia will never give up Crimea," Makarkin said.