1/ 🧵 💥 7 Ways the World Got Better After Russia Lost Crimea — the FIRST Time
Number one: 🇺🇸 ALASKA BECAME AMERICAN 🧵⤵️
2/ THE CONTEXT — The Crimean War, 1853–1856:
Britain, France, Sardinia, & the Ottomans united to stop Russia from dominating the Mediterranean and Black Seas.
Russia lost everything—and Crimea, though still in the empire, was demilitarized.⤵️
3/ AND TODAY…
Trump and Putin are meeting in Alaska—to negotiate on Ukraine—with Crimea again as a fulcrum.
The irony? The last time Russia lost Crimea, it was so broke it sold Alaska to the U.S.
Here’s how the world gained from the 1856 defeat of the Russian War Machine ⤵️
4/🇺🇸 #1 — ALASKA BECAME AMERICAN
In 1867, broke Russia sold Alaska to the USA for $7.2m, ~$150m today.
While many Russians still lack indoor plumbing, today every Alaskan receives an annual dividend from the state's oil revenue. A win for Alaskans!⤵️
5/⛓️ #2 — 23 MILLION SERFS WERE FREED
With no money for foreign wars, Tsar Alexander II faced Russia’s domestic rot: serfdom.
1861: 23 million serfs emancipated.
When dictators can’t distract with war, they must fix what’s broken domestically. ⤵️
6/🚢 #3 — THE BLACK SEA WAS LIBERATED.
The 1856 Treaty of Paris barred Russia from keeping any warships in the Black Sea.
Results:
⦿ Trade doubled
⦿ Food prices stabilized
⦿ Mediterranean commerce flourished
Fifteen years without a Russian navy = 15 years of prosperity. ⤵️
7/🏥 #4 — MODERN NURSING WAS BORN
British nurse Florence Nightingale, tending to the wounded allies, transformed battlefield care through Crimean War sanitation reforms—cutting death rates from 42% to 2%—and creating the profession of modern nursing. ⤵️
8/📰 #5 — THE PUBLIC DEMANDED BETTER STRATEGY
With telegraph & photography, officials could not hide the truth.
Britons read about the wasteful Charge of the Light Brigade before the war was over—and demanded smarter leadership for victory, not a forever war.
📸same scene⤵️
9/🕌 #6 — CRIMEAN TATARS FREED, BRIEFLY
Crimean Tatars—freed from Russian militarization—found space to revive culture and language, echoing the 19th-century spirit of freedom-loving nationalism that opposed imperial war machines ⤵️
10/🎸 #7 — CRIMEA INSPIRED MODERN ROCK
In 1856, Ohio guitar teacher Henry Worrall wrote "Vestapol," inspired by news of the Allied victory over Russia at Sevastopol.
The piece popularized open D tuning—the foundation of blues, country, and rock.
⤵️
11/⚠️ THE TERRIFYING PATTERN
Unless roundly defeated, Russia creeps back.
In 1856, Russia lost Crimea’s military use.
But in 1870, it tore up the Treaty of Paris, rebuilt its Black Sea fleet, and remilitarized Sevastopol. ⤵️
12/ 📖 WARNINGS IGNORED
In the 1872, Dostoevsky’s novel Demons said Russia’s political soul was possessed.
In 1917, three Portuguese shepherd kids in Fatima said that the Virgin Mary had warned them of Russia’s evil.
Months later, the Bolsheviks unleashed hell. ⤵️
13/🕌 CRIMEA AS A WEAPON, AGAIN
In 1944, Stalin deported all Crimean Tatars—nearly 200,000 people—to Central Asia in just 72 hours.
In 2014, Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine and now uses the peninsula as a choke point to threaten trade, peace, and freedom across Europe.⤵️
14/📜 TREATY OF MAR-A-LAGO?
1856: The Treaty of Paris ended the Crimean War and stripped Russia’s military grip on Crimea.
2025: Imagine a new treaty—returning strategic Crimea to the safe, trustworthy hands of Ukraine and the West.
Can the demons be stopped this time? ⤵️
15/ I'm the only American reporting from Ukraine every single day of Russia's full-scale invasion.
"JP Lindsley is the best American journalist covering Ukraine. A conservative, and immune to any sort of propaganda. Truly outstanding journalism."
— @WGNRadio listener 🧵🎬
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