What the Kerch rail link and Nord Stream 2 signalled
A look back at three reports from the days around 26 December 2019, spanning Crimea, Idlib and a sanctioned gas pipeline.
What did the final days before 26 December 2019 reveal about Russia's external projects? The reports from 21 to 24 December point in different directions, and each is best read on its own terms.
On 23 December 2019, construction of the bridge across the Kerch Strait was completed, and a railway connecting Russia with occupied Crimea entered service. For Ukraine, the significance lies in the word the report itself uses: Crimea is occupied, and the new rail line adds another physical connection between it and Russia.
The second project was the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Europe. On 21 December 2019, a contractor suspended pipe-laying because of U.S. sanctions. Nord Stream 2 responded that it would finish construction as soon as possible. The sanctions interrupted the work, but the company signalled that it intended to continue.
The third report came from Syria. On 24 December 2019, a war monitor said eight people, five of them children, were killed when a missile hit a school in Jobas, in Idlib District. The school was being used as a shelter for displaced civilians. Opposition activists blamed Russia. The strike took place during the northwestern Syria offensive, which began in December 2019.
Reading the reports together
The three items are separate events, and the reports do not link them causally. Taken together, they show Russia's activity at that moment on several fronts: infrastructure in occupied territory, a contested energy pipeline, and a war in which activists accused it of responsibility for civilian deaths. For readers in Kyiv, the first two bore directly on questions of occupation and gas transit to Europe, while the third showed the human cost of the fighting in Idlib.
