Don't hold your breath, I think we will have working fusion before the Westerners change their opinion on that stuff.
Trade lanes to where?
Only other places we can get to from there are Turkey and Georgia(Georgia is Russia's bitch) and Russia, and we can do that via Bulgarian and Romanian black sea ports, stuff coming from central Europe can take the Danube, then get transferred through Constanza into the black sea.
To get out of the black sea you still need to go through the Bosporus.
What do you want to ship and where exactly?
We are on the fucking black sea, we haven't found any worthwhile gas or oil reserves, you are dreaming again, oh Muttley of Kiev!
Ignorance of topics that you go out of your way to argue aboit is not something to brag about like this.
For one, trade wise, Black Sea is a way to put cargo from Central\Northern Europe onto ships and to the Mediterranean Sea without sailing it around whole Europe or moving it by land across mountains.
Line wise, it has a criss-cross of existing and planned oil and gas pipelines since a long time.
by Rafael Kandiyoti (Le Monde diplomatique - English edition, January 2011)
mondediplo.com
And then there are internet cables:
en.wikipedia.org
And last but not least, *unexplored* high potential gas and oil fields.
en.wikipedia.org
The Black Sea contains oil and natural gas resources but exploration in the sea is incomplete. As of 2017, 20 wells are in place. Throughout much of its existence, the Black Sea has had significant oil and gas-forming potential because of significant inflows of sediment and nutrient-rich waters. However, this varies geographically. For example, prospects are poorer off the coast of Bulgaria because of the large influx of sediment from the Danube which obscured sunlight and diluted organic-rich sediments. Many of the discoveries to date have taken place offshore of Romania in the Western Black Sea and only a few discoveries have been made in the Eastern Black Sea.
>nothing worthwhile
>20 wells, its nowhere near fully explored yet, and the science folk say it has good potential
How much has Poland's geography changed since there was a Poland?
Also, the place that founded modern Germany is now in Poland!
And how much it changed through wars?
Oh, yeah, all of that.
Also, the Dneper river is a pretty clear dividing line, with the majority of Russians being east of it.
So? Its a very odd qualifier, can be true even without Russians being a majority on these lands. Which on most they aren't.
That's 2001, a most optimistic assessment that was ever going to be there, long before muh coup, long before the wars redpilling people on Russia simping.
Going by that, the only places where Russia can use the national majority argument are *most* of Crimea, still not all of it, and a small piece of Luhansk.
There is no newer census, but even if we use election results as a proxy, Russia simp party (not necessarily Russians) can barely claim Donetsk and Luhansk with most popular but still sub 50% candidate, and hardly anything outside of them, so claiming that majority of people east of Dnieper want to be Russian or simp for Russia is downright ludicrous.
More detailed breakdown:
Mass redpilling shown by election year:
Ironically, this mistaken impression is one of major reasons why Putin launched the invasion and why it was a mistake, as the impression has crashed against quite harsh, very russophobic reality.
If the impression was at least mostly correct, Russia would be facing much less resistance than it is.
There is another perfectly reasonable line on the map for a land for Russians to live in. Its called the border of Russia. They are free to go there, you know. In fact its richer than Ukraine to boot, at least for now. If we're not going to obsess about geography, why won't these Russians who supposedly absolutely want to be ruled by Putin just go there? Its not like the place is overcrowded or something, it has terrible sub-replacement demographics and lots of spare clay.
Also, this discussion is sounding disturbingly like the Molotov-Ribentropp meeting.
Which is yet another reason why officially Ukrainians don't want to make territorial concessions at all,
www.methanist.com
