Over 200 passengers left Simferopol for Moscow on the first internal train on Friday morning, Crimea's acting transport minister Anatoly Tsurkin told Interfax.
Andrei Karakulkin, the head of the enterprise Crimean Railways, told reporters half of the tickets to the train, which can carry 460 passengers, have already been sold.
"The rest passengers will get on the train on the way," Karakulkin said.
The train, which is called Krym, left the Simferopol railway station at 07:00 a.m.
Karakulkin said the train will run daily during the year and the current timetable will be effective until the end of 2015.
Crimean Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Polonsky told reporters the train, which connects Simferopol, Kerch and Moscow, is the first passenger train in 25 years to run through the Kerch Strait.
Three trains connecting Simferopol and Moscow now run through the territory of Ukraine, but the demand for these routes is not high, Karakulkin said.
"Security is important to passengers, and the new route will help us ensure it," Polonsky said.
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