The tyranny of geography: Ukraine’s fatal gamble

Few conflicts in modern times better demonstrate the tyranny of geography than the war in Ukraine. At its center is Crimea, a peninsula whose ownership has been fought over for centuries-a sad reminder that, geopolitically, location largely determines destiny. Once the historical homeland of the Crimean Tatars, it was annexed by Russia in 1783, fought over in the nineteenth-century Crimean War, and transferred to Ukraine in 1954 during the Soviet era. At the time, the move was administrative, almost trivial. No one imagined that the Soviet Union would collapse and leave Crimea under Kyiv’s control, setting the stage for a conflict that would claim hundreds of thousands of lives. When it dissolved in 1991, the USSR bequeathed Crimea to Ukraine […]