After the ill-conceived Crimean War, an eventful 62 years passed before the British and French sent their armies to Ukraine again. It was late 1918 and the Russians had crumbled, while the Ottoman Empire was teetering on the brink. At the beginning of the 20th century Sevastopol’s status was not only strategic but symbolic, making it one of Russia’s three great cities after St Petersburg and Moscow.
Russia’s empire never stopped improving Sevastopol with boulevards and museums,
