BERLIN — Even geopolitical ideas have their own history. One of the great misunderstandings is to treat geopolitics as nothing more than a mix of geography and a hunger for power — both somehow untouched by historical change. And yet, many still believe exactly that.
But history comes into play the moment economic considerations enter the picture. Access to raw materials, for instance, depends on the level of technological and economic development: before the Industrial Revolution, oil reserves were irrelevant. Our reliance on rare earths and critical minerals only emerged with the digital age.
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Long before that, railroads began to shrink continental distances, just as ocean-worthy ships had done centuries earlier across the seas. In other words, distance is not a constant in geopolitical space — it changes with every technological leap that alters how we cross, exploit and use that space.
As such, our geopolitical perceptions shift too.
What was once peripheral can suddenly become the center, and places that once saw themselves as the heart of the world may soon be pushed to the margins.
The anticipated melting of the polar ice caps will have far-reaching geostrategic consequences. The scramble to capitalize on this change is already a major source of global instability — one that will reorder the hierarchy of global powers.
And then there are certain regions that have always drawn the ambitions of empires — zones where controlling the land promises a disproportionate boost in power.
Crimea is one such place. Whoever controls it, dominates the Black Sea, and stands poised to control the straits on the opposite shore — effectively holding the gateway to the Aegean and Mediterranean. It also opens up the potential to extend control across both banks of the Dnieper River.
Now the U.S. wants a piece of the pie
It’s no coincidence, then, that Crimea and the regions surrounding it — the Black Sea to the south and what we now call Ukraine to the north — have been fiercely contested since antiquity.
It’s also no accident that Vladimir Putin chose this as the starting point for his project to resurrect the Russian Empire. Nor that, since taking office, Donald Trump has tried to ensure that Russia isn’t the only one profiting from the conflict in Ukraine.
By pushing Ukraine toward a peace deal, Trump’s aim is for American billionaires to share in the spoils — namely, the country’s mineral wealth, nuclear plants and agricultural output.
Trump talks constantly about peace — but what he really wants is a deal. And “deal” is the right word for a pact disguised as peace: a bargain between two plunderers, struck at the expense of the country under attack.
In Trump’s version of peace, Ukraine would be expected to officially cede Crimea to Russia — a demand he’s voiced time and again.
Putin, for his part, has claimed from the start of his war of aggression that Ukraine isn’t a nation-state at all, but part of the “Russian world.”
Nation-state formation in Europe was a west-to-east process, and Ukraine was late to the party.
It’s true that Ukraine only became a nation-state relatively late, despite having key elements of a national culture. But those cultural fragments weren’t united in an independent framework until about three decades ago.
Two earlier attempts — one at the end of World War I and another during World War II — both failed, due in no small part to Ukraine’s complex geopolitical position as a “very late nation.”
Nation-state formation in Europe was a west-to-east process, and Ukraine was late to the party. Its territory had long been carved up by three great empires: the Habsburgs in the west, the Russian tsars in the north and east, and the Ottomans in the south — including Crimea.
Before them, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had envisioned a grand geopolitical project to build a land bridge from the Baltic to the Black Sea. That project was crushed and divided between the Russians, Prussians, and Habsburgs — much as Ukraine itself was.
Ukrainian interests never counted
Poland had the political good fortune to be restored in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. The Western victors saw strategic value in creating a cordon sanitaire between Soviet Russia and Germany — something impossible without a Polish state.
Ukraine was not so lucky. In 1917–1918, it had placed its bets on German support. Meanwhile, French and British forces tried to block the Bolshevik consolidation in Ukraine, but their intervention failed.
The Ukrainian bid for statehood got lost in the fog of a broader conflict — between the Bolsheviks (Reds) and anti-Bolshevik Whites. The Western powers focused on that fight, and those trying to build a Ukrainian state became mere pawns in a much larger game.
Western troops in Ukraine after World War I weren’t the first intervention in the region. Back in the mid-19th century, when Russia fought the Ottomans and looked poised to dominate the Black Sea, Britain and France sided with the weakening Ottomans. They sent warships into the Black Sea and landed troops in Crimea. After a grueling campaign, they defeated the Russians, halting their southern advance into the Caucasus.
All that mattered was keeping the Black Sea from becoming a Russian lake.
The Crimean War of 1853–1856 saved the Ottoman Empire — barely. It remained the “sick man of the Bosporus,” but a power equilibrium between Turks and Russians was restored — one the Western powers could live with.
Ukraine wasn’t a political factor in their calculations. All that mattered was keeping the Black Sea from becoming a Russian lake. For the British, the Ottoman Empire remained a shield over the Suez Canal — Bismarck’s so-called “jugular vein of the Empire.”
Napoleon III, meanwhile, used the Crimean War to show that France’s Second Empire was Europe’s dominant power and a bulwark against Russian expansion. It also weakened the Holy Alliance — the conservative bloc of Russia, Austria, and Prussia — then seen as a rival to French and British interests. Every player in that war pursued imperial aims. Ukrainian interests didn’t even register.
Anti-imperialism on trial
The Russian tsars had their eyes on Istanbul — ancient Constantinople, the “second Rome” — a symbolic prize that would have confirmed their claim to European supremacy. The Western powers blocked that ambition. Russia took the lesson to heart, pivoting to proxy wars to chip away at Ottoman power in the Balkans and Danube delta.
But the dream of controlling Istanbul and the straits never faded in St. Petersburg.
During World War I, when the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, Russia was given a green light by the West to seize Ottoman territory. The tsar refused Germany’s peace offers and held fast to the alliance with Britain and France — even after devastating losses to the Germans in 1915.
His stubborn pursuit of southern expansion blinded him to the forces gathering at home, culminating in his overthrow in February 1917 and execution by the Bolsheviks. The southward gaze cost the Romanovs their throne.
A first step toward Ukrainian political autonomy came under Lenin in 1922, when Soviet Russia was transformed into the USSR and Ukraine became one of its constituent republics.
Hitler dreamed of making Crimea “ethnically German” by settling South Tyroleans there.
This structure became meaningful only after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991–92, when Ukraine became truly independent — something Putin has never forgiven. That’s why his imperial nostalgia draws more from the old tsarist empire than the Soviet Union. He rejects even Nikita Khrushchev’s 1954 handover of Crimea to Ukraine — a symbolic nod to the immense blood price Ukrainians paid fighting Nazi Germany.
Hitler, too, had coveted Ukraine — its vast natural resources, fertile land, and access to Caspian oil. He dreamed of making Crimea “ethnically German” by settling South Tyroleans there.
Worldcrunch 🗞 Extra!
Know more • As U.S. President Donald Trump hints at a peace plan that may involve Ukraine ceding Crimea, leaders of the Crimean Tatars — the Turkic-speaking Muslim ethnic group indigenous to the region — are voicing strong opposition.
Refat Chubarov, head of the Mejlis — the representative body of the Crimean Tatars — warns that any agreement compromising Ukraine’s territorial integrity would not only undermine the Ukrainian state but also endanger the Crimean Tatar people.
The Crimean Tatars advocate for a national-territorial autonomy within Ukraine, emphasizing their right to self-determination and cultural preservation. — Rein Arnauts (read more about the Worldcrunch method here)
In the end, Ukraine’s resource wealth, fertile soil, and geopolitical location have been a curse more than a blessing — compounded by centuries of imperial carve-ups.
If there is such a thing as historical justice, perhaps it lies in the fact that Britain, France, and Germany now stand behind Ukraine’s struggle for territorial integrity and sovereignty — against a new imperial division of its land, this time by Russia and, since Trump, even the United States.
One thing is certain: in this moment, anti-imperialism — the cause so often talked about with passion — is being put to the test. Sadly, especially here in Germany, it risks being exposed as mere lip service.
