Crimean Nexus

The Crimean Nexus: Putin's War and the Clash of Civilizations by Constantine Pleshakov, 170 pages

Geographically, the Crimea offers a gateway to - and from - the Eurasian heartland.  Climatically, it brings the sub-tropical Mediterranean into contact with the northern steppes.  Culturally, it is one of the great crossroads of civilizations.  Colonized in turn by the Greeks, Romans, Goths, Byzantines, Mongols, Turks, and Russians, by the nineteenth century it was said to be the home of over fifteen nationalities, a place where every town spoke a different language, but like so many places in the "bloodlands" between the Volga and the Elbe its ethnic history was largely rewritten in the first half of the twentieth century.  Under Khrushchev, the Crimea was incorporated within the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and it remained part of the Ukraine when the USSR dissolved despite its large Russian population and strategic importance to Russia.  Meanwhile, despite Kiev's status as the first city of the Rus, the Ukraine has had little experience as an independent nation, having been under the rule of the Poles, the Ottomans, the Habsburgs, and especially the Russians, who dubbed the territory "Little Russia".

In many ways, Russia's undeclared war with the Ukraine, including the seizure of the Crimea, follows the now-familiar pattern of ethnic war, but that bloody pattern is further complicated by the direct involvement of great powers and the resurgence of Russian exceptionalism.  In Constantine Pleshakov's telling, "Putin's war" was the predictable consequence of a long sequence of events, but it is not the end of the sequence.  Pleshakov's short, readable guide to the region, its history, people, and significance is an excellent primer for whatever happens next.