Clear differences are emerging within the Ukrainian government as to whether Ukraine should make the reconquest of Crimea a nonnegotiable goal of its war effort or be prepared to trade at least provisional Russian control of the peninsula for Russian concessions elsewhere. This issue also has the potential to create a deep split between Kyiv and Western governments, which fear that Crimea and control of the strategically vital military base of Sevastopol might be the point on which Moscow would be willing to escalate toward nuclear war. The question is becoming more urgent as Ukraine prepares for an offensive that could potentially allow it to cut the land route between Russia and Crimea.
My own research in Ukraine last month suggests that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would have very great domestic difficulty in supporting a cease-fire leaving Crimea in Russian hands. Not only would this face strong opposition from hard-line nationalists and the Ukrainian military, but the Ukrainian government has helped foster a general public mood that Crimea must be recovered at all costs.
In a departure from the previous government line, Andriy Sybiha, the deputy head of the presidential staff and a veteran Ukrainian diplomat, told the Financial Times last week: “If we succeed in achieving our strategic goals on the battlefield, and when we are on the administrative border of Crimea, we are ready to open a diplomatic page to discuss this issue … [though] this doesn’t mean that we exclude the way of liberation [of Crimea] by our army.”
In a recent interview rebroadcast by Radio Liberty, another advisor to Zelensky, former journalist and hard-line nationalist politician Mykhailo Podolyak, took a very different line from Sybiha, ruling out any compromise with Russia:
Could there be talks about a diplomatic way out of Crimea? … Yes, of course, if [Moscow] starts withdrawing those troops today, then we can wait a day, two or three, while those troops leave together with the [Russian] inhabitants.[…]
A substantial minority, however, said Ukraine should be prepared to give up Crimea in return for peace and the return of the territory taken by Russia since last February. The reasons they gave differed, but the three principal ones were that “otherwise this war will go on forever”; that Crimea (which was transferred from the Russian to the Ukrainian Soviet republics in 1954 by Soviet decree) “was never really part of Ukraine”; and that the pro-Russian population of Crimea would be a perpetual internal problem for Ukraine. According to an opinion survey conducted last July, 58 percent of the Ukrainians who responded said Crimea must return to Ukraine—a majority but not a huge one. Läs artikel