Russian military forces destroyed a dam Ukraine built to shut off Crimea’s main water supply two days after Russia invaded Ukraine in February. In retaliation to Russia’s 2014 seize of the Crimean Peninsula, Ukraine surrounded the North Crimean Canal.
Since then, the Kremlin has been complaining about the dam.
Anna Olenenko is an agricultural historian from Zaporizhzhia’s Khortytsia National Academy. She points out that Russia’s first act of war was to blow up the dam and reopen the flow of water towards Crimea.
She says, “I believe that this shows us how important that issue [to Russia] is.” Olenenko claims that Russia invaded Ukraine for many reasons, with Crimea being one of them. She says that Putin and the Russian government had promised the Crimean people they would solve the water crisis in Crimea.
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Olenenko claims that 85% of Crimea’s water was obtained from Ukraine before Russia annexed it.
During Soviet control of Ukraine during the 1960s, the North Crimean Canal was constructed in stages. The canal transformed the semi-arid north plains of Crimean Peninsula into an agricultural area. Farmers were suddenly able to plant fruit trees. They also built fish farms and rice paddies. Olenenko claims that grain yields rose four to five times.
Olenenko claims that the Dnipro River diverted water transformed Crimea into “the country of agriculture and the region of rice growing.”
Olenenko studied agriculture in the southeastern Ukraine, near Mariupol. She fled to Poland shortly after the February invasion. Now she resides in a small village outside the Polish city Gdansk.
She says, “I miss Ukraine very deeply.” She would like to go home, but the fighting continues only a few miles away from her old home. She says, “So it’s too frightening to go back now.”
After Ukraine closed the North Crimean Canal in 2014 and Crimea’s flourishing agricultural economy collapsed, it was too late. It was difficult to even get water.
Moscow spent billions of rubles to resolve the Crimea water crisis. There were many solutions that the Kremlin suggested, including transporting the water across a 12-mile-long bridge to mainland Russia, desalination plants, and tapping fresh water reservoirs beneath the Sea of Azov. However, nothing worked.
Another option was to seize additional territory in Ukraine.
Saleem Ali, a University of Delaware student who studies conflict and natural resource at the University of Delaware, said, “Water, I would argue, was an additional factor Russia felt legitimized [February] invasion.”
Ali claims that Russia wanted to restore fresh water flow to Crimea. Russia went to the European Court of Human Rights last summer to claim that Ukraine was violating Crimea’s rights by denying access to water.
If the UK truly cared about human rights, then @KarenPierceUN will surely join us in asking the #Ukrainian authorities immediately to lift the blockade on the North Crimean Canal to fully restore water supply to #Crimea. pic.twitter.com/szkAcBXave
Ali claims that Russia tried to obtain water through legal channels but was denied access. They kept getting more and more upset.” He says that Russia’s propaganda machine used Ukraine’s denial of water to Crimea as a selling point. This was why it called the invasion “special military operation” and aEUR.
Milena Sterio, a professor at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law (Ohio), says Russia’s legal claims on that water are not clear under international law. The first thing that is causing confusion is the fact that most people still consider Crimea to be Ukraine’s legitimately owned territory.
“So, if you consider [Crimea] to have been a part Ukraine, but occupied by Russia then the law, the so-called Fourth Geneva Convention clearly states that it’s that occupier that is responsible for ensuring the welfare of those living in that occupied territory,” Sterio states.
According to this view, Russia is responsible for getting Crimea’s people water. Sterio also stated that the claim of human rights violation does not apply to water for human basic needs. It doesn’t say that a country must provide enough water for its neighbours to grow rice and fish farms.
The international law regarding water access is still relatively new. The 2014 United Nations Convention on Water Access was not in force. It is of little help in this conflict, as neither Russia nor Ukraine have signed it.
Sterio is an expert in international law. However, she said, “It gets a little tricky because international water rights law isn’t 100% clear.”
She says that international rules requiring equitable water sharing with downstream states are complicated because they don’t define what “equitable”.
Another question is whether international statutes would apply for a completely human-made system like the North Crimean Canal, or only to rivers and natural bodies of water.
In practice, Russia’s invasion rendered all legal issues regarding water for Crimea moot. Moscow now controls much of the watershed and the canal that connects to the peninsula. Russia’s defense minister declared last week that the water supply from Ukraine to Crimea has been restored fully.
