Even ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's pre-revolution government sought greater energy independence from Russia after bitter price disputes with Moscow and two gas-supply shutdowns in 2006 and 2009. A 2011 OECD analysis identified three major objectives for Ukraine's energy strategy: doubling electricity production between 2005 and 2030, shifting thermal power plants from gas-fired units to ones fueled by domestically produced coal, and increasing nuclear-power generation. Last August, Kiev approved a new energy strategy through 2030 to reduce its dependence on foreign-energy sources through investment in renewable-energy sources and greater utilization of domestic energy reserves.

Unfortunately for Ukraine, the Crimean peninsula was crucial to the country's energy-diversification plans. Yanukovych had opened negotiations with Azerbaijan, Russia's last remaining ex-Soviet energy rival, as part of his effort to build a liquid-natural-gas pipeline terminal on Crimea's Black Sea coast. The peninsula also sits atop vast underwater gas basins in the Black Sea, estimated to contain between 4 and 13 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. As Ukraine's southernmost territory, the peninsula has the highest solar-energy potential in the country and already featured one of Europe's largest photovoltaic parks. Its mountainous coastline holds strong wind-energy potential, with seven wind plants already built there and more planned before the crisis. But all of that infrastructure and investment now rests in Russian hands.

The loss of Crimea only further weakened Ukraine's already-tenuous energy security. Almost all of the fuel for Ukraine's 15 state-owned nuclear reactors, which accounts for almost half of the electricity the country generates, comes from Russia. Ukraine's domestic reserves of uranium are paltry, and it lacks the enrichment capacity to turn what it does have into usable fuel. Russia, by comparison, is a net uranium exporter to Europe and owns nearly half of the world's enrichment capacity.

Ukraine still has some domestic-energy alternatives in the long term, but these require significant investment. The country possesses the third-largest shale gas reserves in Europe, estimated to hold nearly 1.2 trillion cubic meters, but commercial extraction isn't slated to begin until 2020 at the earliest. That timeline might have been overly optimistic even before the revolution, considering the environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") and the public resistance that comes with it. Another complicating factor is location: one of the two large fields, the Yuzivska field, falls almost entirely within the Donetsk and Kharkiv oblasts, two of the eastern regions in which Ukraine has accused Russia of fomenting revolts.