When and if Russia loses Crimea, the US and Ukrainian foreign policy will be aligned.

 

Crimea de iure will become part of Ukraine, but de facto will depend on the United States. The same scenario as Greenland (see Crimea as DMZ in Rhyme and Reason, p. 41).

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Crimea is uncontrollable and needs a large hinterland ever since antiquity. It depends on the north for water and the east for supplies. Therefore, the US will need to extend its influence and to control the northeast shore of the Black Sea. Georgia has received a substantial increase in Saudi Arabian, as well as US and EU investment. Sochi in the Russian Federation (further north) has been attacked by Ukraine.

 

The West and North of the Sea of Azov were owned by Ukraine before 2022. Symbolically it will be an immense change, for in that strip of land between Crimea and Abkhazia, there is the villa of Putin at Gelendzhik, which has already been attacked by Ukraine. Symbolic is also the town of Taganrog, where Czar Alexander I allegedly retired as a monk, Feodor Kuzmich, after staging his death in 1825. The new element will be the US control of the coast between Georgia and Crimea. The Black Sea would become, like the Baltic Sea, a NATO lake

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According to the linguistic map published by Russia in 1914, most of area north of Abkhazia was populated by persons speaking Ukrainian. Ukrainian nationalists have always claimed these areas as naturally their own. Russia has effectively Russified these areas, but the local dialect is not a form of Russian but of Ukrainian. The difference between a language and a dialect is that the former has an army. Thus, if the locals speak a form of Ukrainian, they are naturally under the protection of the Ukrainian army, if they speak a dialect of Russian, they fall under Russian jurisdiction. 

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If the northeast coast of the Black Sea became Ukrainian, it would receive investments as a frontier zone of NATO. Today it is a neglected back quarter of Southern Russia. It is not surprising that the rebellion by mercenary commander Yevgeny Prigozhin started from this forgotten region. The rebel army left from Rostov on the Don on June 23rd 2023 and headed north. It was stopped in Tula by Alexei Dyumin (whom Kallipolis believes will succeed Vladimir Putin as President of the Russian Federation). The area between Rostov on the Don and Tula speak Southern Russian dialect and therefore form a cultural unit, separate from Ukraine and from Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

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Russia has a serious problem since much of the economy of Rostov on the Don is controlled by China. This city is the centre of Russian operations in Donbass and Luhansk which are also heavily dependent on Chinese investment (see Chinese Ukraine). Russia is occupying these areas but de facto they are Chinese. Since the occupation is not legal, Chinese investors would benefit from the access to the legal market, by allowing these areas to return to Ukraine. China does not recognize any Russian occupied areas. China recognizes Crimea as officially part of Ukraine despite the Russian invasion of 2014.

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If Crimea returns to Ukraine, the rebuilding costs and amount of investment needed will be sustainable only by the US. It is possible that the other areas currently occupied by the Russian army, will return to Ukraine, but will be subject to Chinese investment and de facto control.

 

Putin’s war will have only given territories to the US and China in exchange for a radically diminished political, economic, and diplomatic place of Russia in the world.