“Crimea river”: Russia & Ukraine’s water conflict

 "Crimea has been running out of drinking water, and Moscow isn't happy about it.

A fluid backstory: Crimea is a sea-girdled peninsula of arid steppes and salty marshes. For decades, a Soviet-era canal brought Crimea 85 percent of its freshwater from rivers on the Ukrainian mainland.

But that began to change in 2014: after a popular uprising in Ukraine ousted the country's Kremlin-friendly president, Russia annexed Crimea, which is the only region of Ukraine where ethnic Russians predominate.

Although neither Kyiv, the US, nor the EU recognize Russia's control over Crimea, Ukraine has no way of kicking out Russia's vastly superior forces.

But at the same time, as long as the Kremlin de facto governs the place, Kyiv believes it no longer has any responsibility for the well-being of the people who live there. After all, they are now under a Russian flag, not a Ukrainian one. 

And that's where the water crisis comes in, dam it! After the Russian takeover of Crimea, Ukraine built a dam across that Soviet-era canal to stop the flow of water to the peninsula. 

Crimean authorities have since 2014 been forced on occasion to ration water, and after a particularly harsh drought earlier this year, Moscow leveled the charge of genocide at Kyiv for its decision to block the canal. This week, the Kremlin accused Kyiv of ecocide as well.

All of this has forced Russia to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Crimean water infrastructure, not only for the drinking and irrigation needs of the region's 2.5 million civilian residents, but also for the growing number of Russian naval personnel stationed there." GZERO