Crimea Goes Dark

A lot of bad things happen in the Ukraine, where the Russians and Ukrainians spar regularly, but two weeks ago Crimea was in the news for being without power.  People unknown blew up the power tranmission lines heading from Ukraine into Crimea.  Let's see, who might benefit from that?  It is getting colder there now, and the repairs have only just begun.  It isn't slow response that delays them, the Ukrainian Tartars were not allowing the repairs to be done.  It isn't much, but there may be more to come.

The pictures we see from Crimea are children who look cold, and are definitely not in schools.  The Russian news outlets are flooded with them.  You can bet the big naval base at Sevastopol isn't without electricity.  The Russians are fighting to maintain that base and access to the Black Sea, the same way they fight for Syrian bases in the Mediterranean.  Putin is not giving up anything that helps him project his power into the oceans of the world.   

There is a certain justice here.  Ukraine has been through a lot with Russia over the past years, and had their energy supplies cut off three times, once in the middle of winter, because they politically didn't agree with Russia which supplied gas to them.  Russia took Crimea without a fight, knowing that a good deal of its support came from the Ukraine.  The Russians started working on power supplies and telecommunications infrastructure almost in the first week of occupation.  That is not something done in a day.  The Russians will be exposed to these kinds of annoyances for a long time.  I doubt that they have seen the last of this kind of thing, but we have comfort in knowing that the fire the Russians started in Ukraine is not going out anytime soon.