As a result of this discovery, Russian social media users joked that there would be no need to build the 19km (11.8 mile) Kerch bridge linking Crimea and mainland Russia if the peninsula is moving towards Russia anyway. "Crimea's bridge is no longer needed: in as little as 300 million years Crimea will join [Russia's] Krasnodar Region," a spoof account of the Russian Foreign Ministry wrote . "Let it reach the shore itself," wrote another Twitter user . This exceedingly long game - actually only 1.5 million years, Komsomolskaya Pravda points out - could save Russia $3.5bn (£2.75bn) in construction costs, it's been reported