d-soaked-Crimea-crucible-war-
"Back in the days when British schools taught history and poetry properly,
every child knew about the Charge of the Light Brigade. The epitome of
military foolishness, when the flower of the British cavalry attacked
Russia's artillery batteries in the Battle of Balaclava in 1854."
"The blundering diplomacy which caused that war is less well known. Alfred,
Lord Tennyson, whose poem immortalized the fiasco, would have struggled to
versify the complex Anglo-French attempts to shore up the Ottoman empire,
amid an obscure squabble about religious privileges in the Holy Land.
"The Crimea, setting for that most infamous calamity, is a peninsula with a
blood-soaked and tragic history. Long contested by the great powers, it has
been the crucible of many wars. Now it threatens to be the flashpoint for
another one."
"Putin's Russia has seized Crimea under our noses. The dismemberment of
Ukraine is under way."
Edward Lucas
By Epictetus
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