Ukrainian observers believe the Kremlin may even consider a decisive military push through south-eastern Ukraine to create a land corridor linking Crimea with Donbas and end the peninsula’s chronic water shortage – Ukraine has blocked 85 percent of water supplies to the Crimea since 2014.
Crimea and Black Sea access has been a Russian project and possession for 400 years. They certainly don’t want NATO anywhere near Crimea. The only thing that surprises me is that Putin/Russia didn’t grab a land corridor when the Crimea Referendum was done in 2014. Why have they waited?
“Why have they waited? “
I’m thinking they were tied up in Syria and didn’t have financial resources for both.
Plus the politics of Nordstream.