State television showed Putin first meeting with a group of workers before climbing into the Russian-made Kamaz truck and leading a column of other trucks across the bridge. A camera in the truck's cabin showed a pleased-looking Putin bouncing in his seat as he drove and making small talk with two workers.

About 11.8 miles long, the bridge is the longest in Europe, linking Russia's southern Krasnodar region to the port of Kerch in Crimea. Crimea's only other land crossing leads into Ukraine and, until now, vehicles traveling from Russia have had to rely on ferries across the strait that are frequently interrupted by bad weather.

Costing $3.6 billion, the bridge is a colossal project, both in terms of engineering and price. Previous efforts to bridge the straits in the Soviet period had faltered because of the difficult conditions in the strait, where powerful winds frequently whip up rough seas.
Putin opened the bridge's road section today after two years' construction. When a rail section is completed in 2019, according to state media, the bridge will be able to carry 40,000 cars and 47 trains a day. The amount of steel used to build the bridge is enough to construct 32 Eiffel Towers, state-funded broadcaster RT reported.

"I sincerely congratulate you on this remarkable, celebratory and historic in the full sense of the word, day," Putin told workers at the concert, according to state news agency TASS.

"Historic because in different historical epochs, ever under the tsar-batushka, people dreamt about building this bridge," Putin added, using an affectionate folk name for the tsars who ruled the Russian empire until the Soviet period.