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[–] englishwebster ago 

Interesting - your first paragraph is consistent with what little I know - he is in fact loaded and it seems to me that esp in a country like russia if you arent loaded with "fuck you" money then you dont stand a chance - its hard to see anyone being both clean and rich in russia.

I am however well versed in what happened in Ukraine. you said:

A solid example is actually Crimea, it is a poverty stricken wasteland that in reality serves very little mid-term Russian interest. In fact economically it will cost Russia billions for years to come and the apparent petrostrategy/geopolitical purpose backfired as now Ukraine is more interested than ever in moving away from piping business with Russia.

In reality, crimea was a gift from the soviet union to ukraine in 1947 to celebrate some 300 years of unity between both nations/cultures. Crimea more importantly has russias ONLY warm water port to the atlantic. It has a very major strategic importance to russia and it makes sense from a realpolitik position to take back crimea if ukraine is about to be sacked by the west, which it was.

Had russia lost crimea, they would have had a very hard time not only projecting power, but helping syria in their current war against the UAE pipeline.

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[–] 10829707? 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Yes leasing Sevastopol was coming to an end and Russia knew it, which is why it began securing permanent access to Tartus and had already long begun retrofitting Novorossiysk. Furthermore it has been in talks with at least five countries to permanently secure access to other ports. Like Novorossiysk, Sevastopol isn't all roses either, there is a huge cost both directly and indirectly in seizing Crimea and it has destabilized the region dropping the value of the port. Secondly there is a logistical problem with the Sevastopol now that undermines its strategic value as beforehand equipping and maintaining the port was done through Ukrainian territories. Lastly in terms in projecting power, that was the thinking a few years ago but we haven't really seen it, their fleet in the area is too small and expensive to really make use of it and regional players haven't really seen an uptick in naval power projection through Sevastopol.