Moscow - Simferopol, January 14 (PolitNavigator, Mikhail Stamm) - Finally, the general contractor for the construction of the bridge across the Kerch Strait has been determined - it will be Arkady Rotenberg's Stroygazmontazh LLC. The company is already under sanctions, so it has nothing to fear, and it has “at least some experience” in this matter, Vedomosti explains its choice. But the most important thing is that they decided to build a 19-kilometer bridge across the Tuzla Spit: it will include two highway lanes in each direction and two railway tracks.
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Statements by officials about the inexpediency of building the Kerch Bridge turned out to be groundless: the bridge will be built. Let us recall that before the New Year, the head of the Crimean government, Sergei Aksenov, surprised the public with a statement about the need to “coordinate with Ukraine” the construction of the bridge. According to the Crimean Prime Minister, Ukraine will never agree to this, and therefore the bridge will not be built, so it is better to build a tunnel.
Experts associated such statements with lobbying and with the Kremlin’s hopes for reconciliation with Ukraine, after which it would agree to provide Russia with a land corridor through its territory to isolated Crimea. There were also suggestions in Kyiv that Moscow was ready to break through this corridor through the south of Donbass by military force. Now, obviously, the emphasis is on ending the conflict between Moscow and Kyiv at any cost and freezing all constructive relations between countries for many years - it is this situation that makes the construction of the bridge no alternative.
About choosing a general contractor "Vedomosti" said an official from one of the departments participating in the discussion of the project, and two people close to the Ministry of Transport. The draft government order appointing the company as the sole executor and the draft agreement with it have already been sent for approval to the interested ministries and departments, Vedomosti’s interlocutors say.
Finding a general contractor for the megaproject, the estimate of which was previously estimated by the Ministry of Transport at 228,3 billion rubles, turned out to be difficult, the newspaper writes. The appointment of Gennady Timchenko's Stroytransgaz or Mostotrest, whose owners include Arkady Rotenberg's son Igor, was discussed. There was also a proposal to use a scheme with the Federal State Unitary Enterprise under the Spetsstroy agency in order to transfer the risks of sanctions to it. But Spetsstroy has a lot of problems with another construction project of the century - the Vostochny cosmodrome, shares of Mostotrest are traded on Western stock exchanges and this company is afraid of sanctions, and the owner of Stroytransgaz Timchenko at the end of 2014 said that he was afraid to take on the Kerch project and not complete it .
Stroygazmontazh is Gazprom's largest contractor for the construction of 13 gas pipelines with a total length of 7460 km. But the company’s website says nothing about the construction of roads or bridges.
The choice of Stroygazmontazh was justified by the fact that the company has at least some general contracting experience, explains one of the publication’s interlocutors. The company positions itself as an engineering company that carries out large turnkey projects. Even if she does not have enough personal qualifications to build a bridge across the Kerch Strait, she will have enough funds to hire professionals.
Let us recall that Arkady Rotenberg is positioned in the West as a “personal friend” of Vladimir Putin. In this regard, sanctions were imposed against him personally and his company last year.