page_title: Kerch Strait
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Kerch Strait / History
caption_attribution_description: English: "A Map of Colchis, Iberia, Albania, and the neighbouring countries". A map of the Caucasus / Crimea / southern Russia region during classical antiquity (the ancient period). Note that the "Albania" referred to was on the Caspian Sea (not the modern Albania in the Balkans). Copper-engraved map, no publisher or date, London, ca 1770 (or 1729?). Deutsch: Kaukasus mit Siedlungsgebieten von Sarmaten und Amazonen in der Antike, Kupferstich von ca. 1770 Français&#160;: La Colchide, l’Ibérie (orientale), l’Albanie (orientale) et les régions voisines ქართული: ანტიკური ხანის კოლხეთი, ბერძნულ წყაროებზე დაყრდნობით, დაბეჭდილია ლონდონში, 1770. Nederlands: Kaart van de Kaukasus, ca. 1770 Русский: «Европейская Сарматия». Карта основана на греческих литературных источниках, напечатана в Лондоне в 1770
context_page_description: The Kerch Strait is a strait connecting the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, separating the Kerch Peninsula of Crimea in the west from the Taman Peninsula of Russia's Krasnodar Krai in the east. The strait is 3.1 kilometres to 15 kilometres wide and up to 18 metres deep.
  The most important harbor, the Crimean city of Kerch, gives its name to the strait, formerly known as the Cimmerian Bosporus. The Krasnodar Krai side of the strait contains the Taman Bay encircled by Tuzla Island and the 2003 Russian-built 3.8 kilometres-long dam to the south and Chushka Spit to the north. Russia had started the construction of a major cargo port near Taman, the most important Russian settlement on the strait.
context_section_description: The straits are about 35 kilometers (22 mi) long and are 3.1 kilometers (1.9 mi) wide at the narrowest and separate an eastern extension of Crimea from Taman, the westernmost extension of the Caucasus Mountains. In antiquity, there seem to have been a group of islands intersected by arms of the Kuban River (Hypanis) and various sounds which have since silted up. The Romans knew the strait as the Cimmerian Bosporus (Cimmerianus Bosporus) from its Greek name, the Cimmerian Strait (Κιμμέριος Βόσπορος, Kimmérios Bosporos), which honored the Cimmerians, nearby steppe nomads. In ancient times the low-lying land near the Strait was known as the Maeotic Swamp.
  During 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.
  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. The bridge was never completed, and the Wehrmacht finished evacuating the Kuban bridgehead in September 1943.
  In 1944 the Soviets built a "provisional" railway bridge (Kerch railway bridge) across the strait. Construction made use of supplies captured from the Germans. The bridge went into operation in November 1944, but moving ice floes destroyed it in February 1945; reconstruction was not attempted.
  A territorial dispute between Russia and Ukraine in 2003 centred on Tuzla Island in the Strait of Kerch. Ukraine and Russia agreed to treat the strait and the Azov Sea as shared internal waters.
caption: The "Cimmerian Bosphorus" of antiquity, shown on a map printed in London, c. 1770.
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