What is his potential interest in agricultural south Ukraine? Or east Ukraine, home to former Soviet mining, coal, and steel industries, which need massive investment?
Putin has also spoken of Crimea’s historic links to Russia and Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
But propaganda aside, perhaps the answer is more simple: oil and gas.
By annexing Ukrainian land on the Black Sea coast, Putin also annexes the rights to any hydrocarbons found in its maritime zones.
There are signs the Black Sea contains a lot of wealth.
Energy firms such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, Repsol, and Petrochina have begun to show real interest in working with Kiev to explore the area. Energy companies have already found interesting deposits in Russia’s Black Sea zone, near Novorossiysk, and in Romanian zones. Trans Euro Energy has even found commercially viable gas reserves under the Crimean mainland.
At the same time, reserves of cheaply-accessible gas in Siberia are running low.
But even if Putin never extracts a drop of gas from his new territories, the land grab will ensure that Gazprom, his energy champion, will be in charge of how, when, and by whom this might be done.
It will mean that no matter who rules Ukraine, it can never challenge Putin’s monopoly on energy exports from the region.
Oil and gas also shed light on Putin’s interest in the Crimean port of Sevastopol.
It is a good spot from which the Black Sea Fleet can set sail for the Mediterranean. But it is also a deep water port capable of servicing the kind of massive undersea drilling operation that is needed to explore Ukraine’s offshore fields.
On top of this, Crimea hosts three huge solar power plants.
The shopping list in east and south Ukraine is even longer. These regions are said to contain 45 trillion cubic metres of gas out of Ukraine’s estimated reserves of 49 trillion.
They also contain: export terminals in port of Odessa; military ship building yards in Nikolayev; an oil refinery; chemical plants; grain export silos; hydro-electric plants; two of the largest nuclear power stations in Europe; lots of magnesium, coal, and iron ore.
We can add that Putin would save $20 billion by building his South Stream gas pipeline overland through Crimea instead of under the Black Sea to Bulgaria.
According to some Kremlin insiders, the Crimea operation has been six years in the planning.
It is hard to put a dollar amount on the existing and potential assets in these regions, let alone on their strategic and ideological value.
But perhaps a $70 billion or a $100 billion price tag is quite cheap, especially since America and Europe have such short memories.
When the dust settles, even if people on both sides get killed and some of Putin’s friends end up on EU and US blacklists, he will have achieved his aims.
Then he can spend a few billion dollars more on a new charm offensive to reset relations with the West.
