Ukraine is wheat country, comrade!
And they are big in metallurgy, heavy industry, aircraft (make the jet plane with the longest wing span flying today), remote sensing and they have a growing space program with over a hundred launches!
It's got some gas and oil, too. But they are on the Russian teat for oil right now--a legacy of Soviet days trying to keep them dependent. The HUGE bulk of the crude is untapped under the Caspian awaiting the resolution of the fight of the 21st Century between West and East to see which private oligarchy--NY/London, or Shanghai SecPact) bribes, tortures and murders which central bank into ultimate control. Ukrainean oil in the Caspian and it's pinch point position on pipeline distribution, and the wheat, are the reasons every power hungry bunch of geostrategic pricks tread on Ukraine.
Pipe lines crucial to connecting central Asian oil and gas with European consumers run everywhere. Polite company mentions that. It's vulgar and sometimes dangerous to talk about the Ukrainean interest in the oil in the Caspian. It's like no one talks about the oil reserves off the Korean Peninsula, or in the disputed parts of the South China Sea, or off the coast of Cuba, or under the American Great Lakes, etc. Oil in areas being disputed over for ultimate control is best not mentioned, until the bribing, torture, murder and regime change wars to control it are completed.
Ukraine is also vital turf to control to all sides trying to get control of the Classic Eurasian centerline strategy reaching from the Baltic to the Persian Gulf. WWI, WWII, the Cold War, and the Regime Change Wars have all actually been fights between different ambitious players making plays to gain effective control over this pivotal center line and its flanks to control the world's major trade routes . The rest of the 21st Century will also fundamentally be a struggle to see if any single alliance can control it. If anyone does, they effectively become a global economic hegemond able to control the major trade routes from that line outwards.
Texas/Oklahoma/Kansas used to be disputed over similarly in the mid and late 1800s and for largely the same geostrategic and oily reasons. Control them and you could control the coal, oil, gas and wheat there, plus the southern and central rail routes needed to connect to maritime trade routes and to control the approach zones to the anticipated canal in Central America. Ukraine is handy for controlling the Bosporus directly and in directly helps wall off Russian predation on the Middle East and the Suez. Canal, unless of course The Trumper can build an alliance with Russia in which case they get a seat at our central bank, after they strip it from the current private owners, and China becomes a partner or a contained opponent to be destabilized over 50 years.
Ukraine measures 233,000 some square miles, or just a hair smaller than Texas.
Like Texas it's got some cold country in the North and it's got some beach in the south. The Caspian Sea is its version of the Gulf of Mexico.
And like Texas, Ukraine is kind of betwixt and between cultures and has likewise a strong legacy identity of its own. Folks have been calling Ukraine home for 35,000 years!!!
All of this is a way of saying Svi ought to feel pretty darned at home here in another breadbasket with. Oil, gas, coal, and aerospace.
And sure enough, when I heard him interwiewed after he won the game for KU VS. Silo A&M, he revealed an accent very close to Bill's Okie accent with a twist of African American dialect and Hoopah talk.
Some peaceful day, he might return to UKraine.
And he will teach them about how much we have in common...once you gain 20 pounds.
Rock Chalk Svi!!!!!
