An old Soviet joke had it that if Saudi Arabia ever became communist, Riyadh would be importing sand within five years. The situation around the once-prosperous Ukrainian port in Sevastopol suggests a similar dynamic: if the Russians occupy something, as they have in Crimea, it will rapidly slide toward bankruptcy. The port’s insolvency is a combined result of sanctions, mismanagement and the inevitable scramble for assets between various parts of the Russian government that want to extract what income they can from it before it dies and Russian firms, which appear more interested in value stripping than in making the port a success.
Following the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Ukrainian government invoked international law and closed Sevastopol and other Crimean ports to international shipping. Under the terms of this ban, any captain who docks his ship there would face massive fines and even imprisonment under international law.