Were people in the Crimean peninsula stuck in traffic on the Kerch bridge after a fuel depot blast in the Russian-occupied city of Sevastopol on April 29, 2023? No, that's not true. The footage recently circulated on social media is from October 2022.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on TikTok on April 30, 2023, by the pro-Ukrainian account @sasha_reznikov_. The same video - 23 seconds long - was shared by numerous accounts on the same platform (examples can be found here, here, and here).
The footage shows a traffic jam on the Crimean Bridge, the 19-km (12-mile) bridge over the Kerch Strait which is the only direct link connecting Russia's mainland and the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow from Ukraine in 2014. On the right top angle is the date "29.04.2023" and on the top left angle a graphic reads "КРЫМ AP" ("Crimea AP" in English), suggesting this is a recent news video.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri May 5 10:44:58 2023 UTC)
The video opens with the graphic, in Russian:
А на Крымском мосту пробка с 4-х утра
что то случилось?
And with the caption, in Russian:
Вообще не хочу уезжать из Крыма🔫
Translated by Lead Stories staff into English (original lack of punctuation preserved), the text reads:
And on the Crimean bridge there is a traffic jam since 4 in the morning
something happened?
While the caption reads:
I don't want to leave Crimea at all🔫
This is an old video, which was originally published on YouTube on October 9, 2022, by the Ukrainian TV channel FREEDOM under the title «Пробки у Крымского моста - водители готовы стоять в очереди сутки» (in English "Traffic jams on the Crimean bridge - drivers are ready to stay in line for a day"). The footage published online last year has no date and on the top right angle, only the FREEDOM logo is visible.
The footage is related to a giant explosion that damaged the Crimean Bridge on October 8, 2022. Despite the bridge quickly reopening to cars and buses along its remaining road span, massive traffic jams were reported on both the Russian and the Crimean sides.
On April 29, 2023, a drone strike set ablaze a Russian fuel storage facility in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, for which Moscow blamed Ukraine. No traffic jams were reported by Russian media on that day.
