Ukraine Is Serious About Taking Back Crimea

A Ukrainian attack on the Russian-occupied peninsula might only be a matter of time.

By Anchal Vohra, a Brussels-based columnist for Foreign Policy who writes about Europe, the Middle East and South Asia.

People pose for photographs in front of a picture of a postage stamp showing an artists impression of the Kerch bridge on fire on October 8, 2022 in central Kyiv, Ukraine.

February 22, 2023, 2:56 PM

Understanding the conflict one year on.

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Nearly one year ago, a 40-mile-long column of tanks rolled toward Kyiv on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He intended to conquer Ukraine in a few days but instead exposed the weaknesses of his own military. Rather than a further expression of Russian imperialism, the war may now represent a stunning reversal of those ambitions, as Ukraine increasingly considers making an effort to retake Crimea, which Putin seized nearly a decade ago and has since absorbed into Russia.

In March 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was open to discussing “compromises” on Crimea if that ended the war and saved his cities from destruction. This January, however, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Zelensky said, “Crimea is our land, our territory,” and asked the West for weapons to retake the strategic peninsula.

Successes on the battlefield have emboldened the Ukrainian president to seek military victories before any negotiated settlement. The fact that Russia has routinely used bases in Crimea to attack Ukrainian infrastructure has cemented the belief in Kyiv that regaining Crimea is essential to putting a decisive end to the threat posed by Russia.

One Ukrainian analyst told Foreign Policy that there is credible talk among government officials in Kyiv about attempting to retake Crimea even before fully capturing the Donbas region, where most of the fighting is now taking place. Alina Frolova, the deputy chair of the Centre for Defence Strategies in Kyiv and a former deputy defense minister of Ukraine, said Ukrainian political and military elites have increasingly signaled over the last few months that the reclamation of Crimea is their explicit goal. She added that the government is supported in its quest by some parts of the Biden administration.

“Earlier, our Western allies would say, ‘Yes, it is your territory, yes, we know, but maybe we [can] find a different solution.’ They wanted to discuss Donbas and put Crimea aside. But now we don’t hear any such things,” she told Foreign Policy from Kyiv. “Now the talk is that if we retake Crimea, the front line will change substantially and as will the political process. Moreover, it will give easier access to the east.”

Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army Europe, has been among the most vocal advocates of the idea. “Crimea is the decisive terrain—that’s what matters. If Ukraine liberates Crimea, which I believe is possible this year, then everything else will follow,” he told Ukrainian media this month.

Crimea had been relegated to the bottom of the pecking order in the battle plans, the last item on the list to be resolved and perhaps even reserved as a peace offering for Russia. But over the last few months, it has appeared on the radar of the U.S. government as a possible path to end the war this summer and deny Russia a war of attrition. There are concerns in Washington that if the war does not have an end date, then it might be hard to sustain public support for the Ukrainian cause.

There are arguments both for and against Western support to a Ukrainian mission in Crimea, and it is still unclear which way the United States would finally lean, but the Biden administration has reportedly softened its stand and is war-gaming the option.

Military experts say the idea is first to isolate Crimea and then, when the Russian troops are battered, to launch a combined forces operation to reclaim the territory.

This would at first require severing Russian supply lines to Crimea—the Kerch Bridge, built in 2018, and the so-called land bridge that runs through the recently captured cities on the coastline of the Sea of Azov. Both operations depend heavily on the West agreeing to provide long-range attack weapons, among other capabilities.

The 12-mile-long Kerch Bridge was built by Russia to sustain tens of thousands of Russian troops and several Russian bases, including the naval base at Sevastopol, home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. (Kerch was already damaged in an explosion last October in an attack that Ukraine said it “did not order,” and the bridge is being repaired by Russia.) Retaking and holding the land bridge, however, would be a much harder operation. Ukraine has HIMARS rocket launchers, which have a range of around 50 miles, and will soon receive GLSDB precision-guided bombs, with double that strike range. Both these weapons can be effectively deployed to take out the command centers, ammunition depots, and rail and road links on the land bridge that connects Russian troops in the east to the south and leads into Crimea.

“With these weapons, and from their existing positions, Ukraine can attack the area of the land corridor [and the north of Crimea], and if they move troops into that area, that could the basis for trying to seize the corridor,” said Neil Melvin, the director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). But without longer-range capabilities, Ukrainian troops could be sitting ducks. “But equally, the Russians can hit Ukrainian troops in the corridor” from the Caspian Sea, Black Sea Fleet, or even inside Russia, he added.

Military experts say that at the very start of such an operation, Ukraine would need long-range attack capabilities such as the ATACMS, a surface-to-surface missile that has a range of 190 miles. The West would also need to provide other equipment to allow Ukrainians to deploy a large armored force capable of penetrating enemy lines without getting blown up by mines or trapped in trenches dug out by Russians. Presuming such an attack goes as planned, with Russian supply lines cut off, Ukrainians would then carry out a combined forces attack on all remaining Russian troops in Crimea, aiming to defeat them in close-quarter combat and force them to retreat.

Some experts believe this plan could work, but many others are far more skeptical. It is true that Ukrainians have more than once proved they are formidable warriors and have already struck various Russian facilities inside Crimea. But while isolating Crimea is one thing, entering, attacking, and holding such a heavily fortified region guarded by the Russian naval fleet is quite another.

There is no consensus, moreover, among Western nations about providing longer-range weapons to Ukraine. Few believe Russia will resort to a tactical nuclear strike, yet many are worried that any weapon that can potentially be used by Ukraine to launch attacks inside Russian territory may raise the risk of escalation and drag other Western countries into a direct war.

Additionally, Washington is concerned it simply does not have enough ATACMS to spare in the off chance that the United States comes under attack from Russia or an adversary like China. Ukrainians, of course, hope that the United States will once again overcome its anxieties over Putin’s red lines and abandon its reluctance. But there are other problems, too.

Even if Ukrainians are supplied with longer-range weapons and they succeed in pounding Russian bases, ammunition centers, and bridges and railroads, any subsequent land operation would still be a bloodbath. There are two entries into Crimea from Ukraine: the Syvash, also known as the Rotten Sea, which is a large area of shallow lagoons made impassable with mud, and the isthmus of Perekop, which is far too narrow for land troops to survive a Russian onslaught.

William Courtney, a former U.S. ambassador to Georgia and White House Russia advisor during the Clinton administration, said that from a military standpoint, Ukraine will find it difficult to reclaim Crimea even with Western support. “The absence of amphibious combat capabilities and Russia’s ability to block the isthmus would mean, militarily, the attack would be difficult, more difficult than elsewhere in Ukraine,” said Courtney, who is now with the Rand Corp.

In a classified briefing, four U.S. Defense Department officials informed the House Armed Services Committee that Ukrainian forces are unlikely to be able to recapture Crimea anytime soon. Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said the probability of a Ukrainian military victory, “defined as kicking the Russians out of all of Ukraine to include what they claim as Crimea, … anytime soon is not high, militarily.”

There are other considerations as well. More than 60 percent of the population in Crimea is ethnic Russian, while the rest is a mix of Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians. An uprising against Ukrainian rule in Crimea cannot be ruled out, and there is an imminent fear of pro-Russia civilians being killed in the chaos of war. If that happens, “Ukrainians may begin to lose the moral high ground,” Melvin of RUSI added. Crimea’s unique history and demographics make many observers wonder if its status should ultimately be resolved through diplomacy rather than military fighting. What’s not in dispute is that it must be made far more costly for Russia to hold Crimea.