No matter how vastly outgunned and outnumbered its army, Ukraine’s heroic spirit seems indomitable in the fight for survival.

No matter how vastly outgunned and outnumbered its army, Ukraine’s heroic spirit seems indomitable in the fight for survival. The valiant Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, does well to remind the world that the murderous invasion of his country by Russia is the continuation of a land grab that started in 2014 with the invasion – albeit less lethal – and eventual annexation of Crimea.

With the loss of the peninsula, Ukraine also lost its most promising wine producing region, covering more than 24,000 hectares. Russia once more reaps the rewards of these vines, some of them planted, admittedly, before Crimea became Ukrainian. Since 2014, however, some of the finest wineries have been sold on at huge profit. The famed Massandra, for instance, founded by Tsar Nicholas II in 1894 and still producing vastly expensive wine, was sold in January to the man reputed to be Vladimir Putin’s “personal banker”, Yuri Kovalchuk.

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