Crimea as Seen in Satellite Images

A Google Earth image of Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula, home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. (Source: Google Earth) As I'm putting this post together, Ukraine has put its military on high alert, and Russian troops along with other forces have surrounded a number of Ukrainian military bases on the Crimean Peninsula — home to Russia's Black Sea naval fleet. Just a week after the end of the Sochi Olympics, the Russians have invaded Ukraine, and so there is now a risk of war in Europe. Hard to believe. This isn't a typical kind of topic for ImaGeo, but I thought I'd approach it by providing some remote sensing imagery of the region, and particularly Sevastopol, which has obvious military importance to the Russians, who have a long-term lease from Ukraine on their naval base there. In the image above, you can see multiple ships docked in the harbor — many of them Russian naval vessels. How strong is the force there? Here's how Mark Galeotti, author of “Russian Security and Paramilitary Forces Since 1991,” and a professor at New York University, answered this question in a Q&A with the Washington Post: