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Grain has been used as an important bargaining chip in the Ukraine war, but given the country’s appealing geography, the battle over water has been equally vital. Early on in the fighting, Russian forces destroyed a dam in Ukraine’s Kherson region that had blocked water access to Crimea. In the southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, Russian soldiers cut off a strategic water supply, leaving its population without safe drinking water. Straight Arrow News contributor Peter Zeihan believes a turning point in the war is possible should Ukraine succeed in regaining control of the flow of water into Crimea:
In many ways water is the worst! It’s low value. It’s bulky. It sloshes. It is among the most difficult of things to move en masse. And yet and yet and yet it is absolutely essential to the human condition. Have water? You can be something special. Don’t have water? History is just itching to forget about you. Which has direct implications for the Ukraine War.
And for the issue of the moment, there is a canal that goes from the Dnieper River south to the Crimea. Now, at the beginning of this war in Ukraine in February, the head of that connection on the Dnieper River was in Ukrainian hands. Now it is not. So the Russians, since taking over, have opened that back up and are allowing water to fly to the Crimean Canal, which is allowing the farmers in Crimea to actually grow real crops for the first time, something besides dry season wheat. So for the first time this year, if the Russians hold the territory the whole year, we might actually see Crimea become self sufficient and food.
That’s going to be very important very soon, because the Russians are in the process of losing in Kherson Oblast. And if the Ukrainians succeed in retaking their city of Kherson they will be able to control that sluice gate that controls the canal. And then all of a sudden all of Crimea overnight is high and dry. And any progress that the Crimean excuse me any progress that the Crimean farmers have made will simply dry up and blow away. And that could be the first stage for major reversal in this war.
