Darrell Castle talks about the most dangerous powder keg in the world right now and that is the Crimean Peninsula where Russia has its Black Sea Fleet and where Ukraine has desires of reconquest.

Transcription / Notes

POWDER KEG

Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 3rd day of March in the year of our Lord 2023. I will be talking about the most dangerous powder keg in the world right now and that is the Crimean Peninsula where Russia has its Black Sea Fleet and where Ukraine has desires of reconquest. Crimea has very important strategic interest to both sides and is therefore a powder keg that could explode in nuclear war.

I know that I talk about World War lll and nuclear conflict a lot, but I am not the little boy who cried wolf because there is a real wolf out there right now. Crimea, as Vladimir Putin has said a few times has more than military importance to Russia. Militarily it is home to Sevastopol Naval Base which is Russia’s only warm water base, and it provides Russia with a naval route from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean and from there into the Persian Gulf. It also has the military significance to Russia of preventing the West from using it to stage intermediate range ballistic missiles as part of its plan to surround Russia.

Crimea has spiritual significance to Putin as he has said quite often. It is the location of the Baptism of St. Vladimir who converted to Christianity and then brought the religion of Orthodox Christianity to Ukraine because he was born in Kiev, and then to all of Russia. That was around 987 and at that time there was no Ukraine and Russia because it was just Russia. Without going into the entire history, it is important to note that in 1783 Catherine the Great took Crimea back from the Ottoman Empire where it remained until the death of Stalin in 1954. Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev decided to cede it to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine which became independent after the Soviet fall in 1989 but was then a Russian state so he knew Russia would still control it. In 2014 after the fall of the Pro-Russian government in Ukraine, Russia recaptured Crimea.

So, Crimea is important to Russia for reasons I have stated, but it is also important to Ukraine. The capture of Crimea would mark the end of Russia as a great power. It would be a crushing and humiliating defeat that Putin could not possibly survive. Russia would no longer have a presence in the Black Sea and would no longer be a threat to the Ukrainian ports and it would make future Russian attacks much more difficult. It would follow then, that the entire Russian Federation would be weakened to the point of possible disintegration.

Undersecretary of state, Victoria Nuland, yes, she’s the one from the Nord Stream Report, is now saying that the U.S. is supporting Ukrainian strikes on Crimea, which drew a stern reminder from Moscow that the Crimean Peninsula is a redline the crossing of which will have consequences. Zelensky in a news conference, said that Ukraine is preparing a large operation for the de-occupation of Crimea. I pray that U.S. leaders are unwilling to continue poking the nuclear bear, but evidence is to the contrary.

It seems that Vladimir Putin is just as determined to maintain Russia’s position as a great power as the West is determined to end it. It is hard for a Westerner to understand what Crimea means to the Russian soul. For example, during the siege of Crimea by the French, British, and Turks in 1854-55, and the Germans and Romanians in 1941-42, the Red Army lost more men than the U.S. has lost in all its wars in its entire history. Here is a comparison that makes Crimea’s importance easy to understand. From an unknown Russian, “In the last resort, America would use nuclear weapons to save Hawaii and Pearl Harbor, and if we have to, we should use them to save Crimea.”

So, Crimea presents the greatest threat of nuclear catastrophe ...