Originally Posted by https://www.nzz.ch/meinung/die-krim-wird-das-endspiel-des-russisch-ukrainischen-krieges-sein-ld.1734352
Crimea will be the endgame of the Russian-Ukrainian war - why there can be no territorial compromise over the Black Sea peninsula
Some believe it is possible that Kiev and Moscow will find a compromise: The Donbass goes back to Ukraine, while (occupied) Crimea remains Russian. The two territories, however, are essentially interrelated, for example in terms of water supply.
The necessity of liberating the Russian-occupied Ukrainian mainland as soon as possible is no longer questioned by most Western experts. In contrast, however, quite a few observers, politicians and diplomats believe that the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 should be accepted as a fait accompli.
The failure to return the Black Sea peninsula in scenarios to end the Russian-Ukrainian war is often presented as pragmatic. Meanwhile, distinguishing between the Crimean issue on the one hand and peace efforts on the other ignores fundamental facts on the ground. It fails to recognize important causes and dynamics of the escalation of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict since 2014, if not before.
The 2014 occupation of Crimea was a costly and risky endeavor. One purpose of Russia's invasion of Ukraine eight years later was to facilitate its continued occupation of the peninsula. Strategically splitting Western policy toward Moscow into ending Russian occupation of mainland Ukraine, on the one hand, and postponing Crimea's liberation, on the other, is not expedient. This scenario would not only be unsatisfactory for Kiev. It would also pose several challenges for Moscow.
First, the economy of occupied Crimea had a growing domestic water deficit between 2014 and 2022. The peninsula has always had limited freshwater reserves of its own (Black Sea water is salty and unprocessed, unsuitable for economic use). This problem was solved in the late and post-Soviet period by the North Crimean Canal, which brings river water from Dnipro in southern mainland Ukraine across the Perekop isthmus to the peninsula.
When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Ukraine blocked the North Crimean Canal. To keep the economy and infrastructure - including military facilities - running, Russia increasingly depleted the sparse local freshwater resources by 2022. A growing socioeconomic problem arose for the Russian occupation authorities.
Since conquering the peninsula nine years ago, Moscow has not built a single desalination plant in Crimea. The lack of new desalination factories, or even water pipelines from southern Russia, became increasingly threatening. In view of the growing freshwater deficit on the occupied peninsula, Moscow's inaction was telling. The likelihood of a war to capture the North Crimean Canal became more likely with each passing year. In the spring of 2022, Moscow solved its infrastructure problem until further notice by militarily capturing and reopening the canal.
Only partial restoration of Ukrainian territorial integrity, as many observers are advising today, would lead to a second Ukrainian closure of the canal. This would restore the problematic situation from 2014 to 2022 for Russia's continued occupation of the peninsula. Moscow, in turn, would face a fundamental infrastructure problem.
A second challenge of Russian-occupied Crimea between 2014 and 2022 was the lack of a land connection to Russia. To be sure, the rapid construction and opening of the Kerch Bridge in 2019 partially addressed this problem. However, the transport viaduct across the Kerch Strait only partially eliminated the geo-economic problem of the annexed peninsula. Russian institutions, businesses, and citizens could not use the southern Ukrainian mainland to transport goods and people to and from Crimea.
The third problem of Russian-conquered Crimea is its precarious status in strategic terms. Crimea was and is far away from Russia. It belongs geographically and historically to Ukraine. Throughout its pre-Soviet, Soviet, and post-Soviet history, the peninsula was administratively connected almost continuously to what is now mainland Ukraine. This was the case in the Crimean Khanate (before 1783), the Tsarist Empire (1802-1917), the Soviet Empire (1954-1991), and the Ukrainian state (1991-2014).
Prior to its capture by Catherine the Great, the Crimean Khanate included what is now the Ukrainian mainland north of the peninsula. During the Tsarist period, Crimea was part of the Taurida Governorate, which united the peninsula with the southern Ukrainian mainland region and population. For most of its Soviet history, Crimea was part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic; its temporary status as an exclave of the Russian Soviet Socialist Federation from 1922 to 1954 was an administrative-historical aberration. When Ukraine gained its independence, the Black Sea peninsula became the Autonomous Republic of Crimea within the new Ukrainian state.
After conquering the peninsula in 2014, Moscow attempted to counter Crimea's fundamental geological, socioeconomic, and administrative-historical constitution. But it succeeded only incompletely until 2022. Only the large-scale Russian invasion provisionally restored the administrative link with the Ukrainian mainland. If, in the course of a partial restitution of Ukrainian sovereignty, Crimea were to be politically separated from the Ukrainian mainland once again, the precarious situation in Crimea would be further aggravated.
A fourth challenge to a permanently Russian-occupied Crimea would be that the international repercussions of the annexation would remain. Crimea is a sanctioned and isolated region. Since 2014, it has been largely cut off from foreign trade, foreign investors, non-Russian tourism, and global cultural and scientific exchanges. It is not recognized as Russian territory by most countries in the world and remains Ukrainian under international law. The occupied peninsula has developed its own rather repressive political, social, and cultural life.
From 2014 to 2022, it was also in a security no-man's land between the Russian Federation and the Ukrainian heartland. Russia's military conquest and subsequent annexation of southeastern mainland Ukraine in 2022 was intended to mitigate these geostrategic problems of occupied Crimea. Once the Ukrainian mainland areas north of the occupied peninsula are liberated, Crimea's international isolation is also likely to increase again. The Kremlin is likely to be thrown back into the 2014 situation in its efforts to integrate the annexed peninsula into the Russian state and international exchanges.
Upgrading Crimea's geo-economic and geopolitical position as part of the Novorossiya (New Russia) project was one reason for Moscow's attack in 2022. Making the peninsula one of five annexed, interconnected Ukrainian regions aimed to reduce Crimea's isolation and vulnerability as a Russian-occupied exclave since 2014. A return of the Ukrainian mainland territories annexed in 2022 could possibly be acceptable to the Russian population. However, without Russian control of southeastern mainland Ukraine, integration of a continued occupied Crimea into the Russian Federation and economy, as attempted between 2014 and 2022, remains a costly and uncertain endeavor.
Western considerations of a seemingly pragmatic separation of the goal of returning Russian-occupied Ukrainian mainland territories to Kyiv control from the task of reversing the Crimean annexation may be well-intentioned. But they not only ignore Ukrainian wishes and principles of international law and the European security order. They also underestimate the high costs and risks of implementing this plan. The price of occupation is likely to be so high that the Russians may consider reversing it.
For there to be sustainable stabilization in the region, the West should support Kiev in liberating all occupied Ukrainian regions, including Crimea, with all the means at its disposal.
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