EXPERT INTERVIEWS – Mention “the war“ to Ukrainians and they will likely date the conflict not to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of their country, but to the Russian occupation and illegal annexation of Crimea eight years earlier. Now Crimea is back in the headlines, because of a White House peace plan that would include U.S. recognition of Russian control over Crimea.
“Crimea will stay with Russia,” President Donald Trump told Time Magazine last week.
Russia annexed Crimea illegally in 2014 and sent troops to the peninsula to enforce an occupation that has persisted ever since. For Ukraine and Russia both, Crimea holds profound strategic and historical importance.
Crimea was a a crucial piece of the Russian Empire after it seized the territory from the Ottomans in 1783. Britain and France went to war in 1854 to try to drive the Russians from Crimea. The Soviet Union transferred control of Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in 1954, and it remained a part of Ukraine after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet empire. That control held until Russia’s move in 2014.
Crimea is home to Sevastopol, the only deep-water port on Russia’s Black Sea, and home to its Black Sea Fleet, which it has used to project power in the Mediterranean, and against Ukraine. In the current war, Crimea has also afforded Moscow a critical logistical hub for its troops.
As Cipher Brief expert Lieutenant General Ben Hodges (Ret.) put it, “Crimea is sort of the balcony that looks out over the entire Black Sea region. From there, you can dominate shipping, air, freedom of navigation, all of these things.”
The Cipher Brief spoke about the recent news, and Crimea's importance, with three experts: William Courtney, former U.S. Ambassador to Kazakhstan and Georgia and Special Assistant to the President for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia; Oleksiy Goncharenko, member of the Ukrainian Parliament; and Lt. Gen. Hodges, who served as Commander of U.S. Army Forces in Europe.
The three spoke with Cipher Brief Managing Editor Tom Nagorski. The interviews have been edited for length and clarity. You can watch them in full on the Cipher Brief YouTube channel.
THE EXPERTS
The Cipher Brief: The Trump administration has reportedly included in its peace plan for Ukraine the notion that Crimea must remain in Russian hands. And President Trump told Time Magazine, “Crimea will stay with Russia.” What’s your response to that?
Amb. Courtney: It's unclear – does “stay with Russia” mean de facto or de jure? It's been de facto as far as the West is concerned, but de jure is really something that would cross a big boundary. The West would never recognize them as de jure, legally part of Russia. And certainly the international community would not do that either. The United Nations General Assembly would not do that. The United Nations Security Council, where France and Great Britain have a veto, would not do that. The International Court of Justice would not do that, and certainly Ukraine would not do that. So there's really very little utility for any country to pretend that somehow Russia has de jure control over Crimea.
If the administration were to take that position, there would likely be a strong blowback in Congress, certainly from Democrats, but also from quite a few Republicans who believe that it would set a bad precedent for a couple of reasons.
One, certainly people are concerned that if Russia were to have de jure control over Crimea, this could provide some incentive for China to take forcible action against Taiwan.
But a more specific issue relative to Ukraine is that if there were to be acceptance by the U.S. or someone else of de jure control, this could be followed by [Russian] military rebuilding in Crimea, a reconstitution of forces, both naval forces, air forces, that once again Russia could threaten the shipping lanes from ports around Odesa out through the Bosporus Strait, as Russia did before.
It was only when the Ukrainians, using their own weapons — for example, the Neptune missile which sank the Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea fleet, and other drones, uncrewed surface vehicles, to attack other surface combatants of Russia — [that] Russia relocated most of those surface combatants farther to the east. As we've just seen in recent days, Russia is not safe over there.
So the Ukrainians, through their own ingenuity and with some help from us, have really cleared the pathway so that shipments of grain and other commodities from ports in Ukraine are reaching world markets now, without being threatened seriously by Russian military activity. That would change if there were some de jure acceptance of Crimea as being part of Russia.
Lt. Gen. Hodges: This would be damaging to American credibility, if our government somehow acknowledged or recognized Russia's claim to Crimea, which it illegally annexed in 2014. That would put us on the wrong side of every sort of legal consideration, sovereignty, international rules-based order, et cetera.
The Chinese would take note; they would be interested to see that apparently, the U.S. is flexible when it comes to nations grabbing the terrain of other nations. The Chinese are doing this gradually in and around the Philippines in the South China Sea, and obviously Taiwan would be the great prize. This is the kind of thing that erodes the deterrence that we supposedly are wanting to deploy against China.
It also would have a negative connotation for the long-term recovery of Ukraine. I've spoken to very senior investment officials who said that there's no way that they would invest in the reconstruction of Ukraine if it looked like the conflict was going to resume. So long as Russia occupies Crimea, they have the ideal launching pad for missile attacks, as well as ground assaults and disruption of Ukrainian shipments coming out of Odesa.
So I see no positive reason for the United States to go along with this. Nobody else in Europe is going to recognize it, and most interestingly, Turkey, from the beginning, has said that Crimea is Ukrainian sovereign territory. Turkey has an interest in Crimea because of the Tatars who have been there for centuries.
Goncharenko: Definitely for us, it's a very big problem. We will never recognize any inch of our territory, including Crimea, to be Russian. For the moment, you should understand that even Belarus and North Korea do not recognize Crimea to be Russian. Iran does not recognize Crimea to be Russian. China does not recognize it. The closest Russian allies do not do this. It will make the United States the first to recognize Crimea to be Russian, at a time when even crazy authoritarian regimes and Russian allies do not do this.
For Ukraine, it's our territory. It's painful for Ukrainian morale and that's clear. But it’s not just about this. What is more important is that this will be a first [step] towards the end of international law, because it would mean that you can change borders by force. And that will open Pandora’s Box, throughout the whole planet. Some countries which have territorial disputes with other countries, they can just use force. So it will be a serious problem for international law and that will have serious consequences.
The Cipher Brief: Strategically, why is Crimea such a prize for both sides?
Amb. Courtney: It is located in the western part of the Black Sea. Anti-air missiles, offensive missiles, combat aircraft flying from Crimea, these could reach pretty much all the Black Sea area and the littoral states there. It is, from a military perspective, a platform that's pretty advantageous.
Ukraine has been able to essentially deny Russia the ability to use Crimea as an asset to threaten targets throughout the region, whether those are Ukrainian targets or ships in the Black Sea or even NATO members like Romania and Bulgaria. The main purpose of what Ukraine has been doing is really to deny Russia that capability. And it's done that pretty successfully through drone strikes on the [Russian] ships, but also air attacks with drones and other systems against Russian land-based forces. Russia, for example, has had an S-400, one of its most advanced anti-aircraft systems. The Ukrainians have successfully attacked that in Crimea. So at this point, the Russians really are not able to use Crimea for a military purpose that results in some regional threat.
Lt. Gen. Hodges: The reason that Catherine the Great took [Crimea] back at the end of the 18th century was to protect the Russian coastline from the Ottoman Navy. Whoever owns Crimea today, with modern long-range weapons and anti-ship missiles, you can pretty much reach almost every corner of the Black Sea. And the Black Sea is important as an East-West economic corridor, as well as a North-South economic corridor. We have three NATO countries on the Black Sea — Turkey, Bulgaria, and Romania — as well as friends in Moldova and Ukraine. And Crimea is sort of the balcony that looks out over the entire Black Sea region. From there, you can dominate shipping, air, freedom of navigation, all of these things.
It is also important because as long as Russia occupies Crimea, then Ukraine will never be able to get back up into the Sea of Azov. Before 2014, there was an agreement between Russia and Ukraine over the use of the Azov Sea. The Azov Sea is not international water — it's an inland body of water, which means that those nations could control it. But with Ukraine blocked now from access because of the Russian Kerch Bridge, two of Ukraine's five biggest ports — Mariupol and Verdanetsk — are unusable, unreachable. And of course, Mariupol was destroyed. So this is significant for Ukraine's ability to export and import, as well as the military considerations as well.
Goncharenko: Crimea is definitely very strategic. We're speaking about the Black Sea and Russian military bases there. That's why Crimea is so important for [the Russians]. [Russian control] would strengthen Russia's partial grip on the northern part of the Black Sea, which is bad because the Black Sea is a very important place, a geopolitical hotspot of the world. From the times of the ancient Greeks, the Black Sea has been the breadbasket of the civilized world. The Black Sea is super important for Turkey, Georgia, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, and definitely for Russia. So this would embolden Russia, and that will make them stronger in the Black Sea area, which is bad for everybody.
The Cipher Brief: President Trump has practiced something like a take-the-deal-or-else kind of diplomacy. I assume it would be politically almost impossible for President Zelensky to accept Russian sovereignty in Crimea.
Amb. Courtney: That's correct. No one in Ukraine would back that up. Let's separate a ceasefire or truce versus a political settlement or a peace agreement. Peace agreements and political settlements are much more complicated and more permanent than ceasefires. What we've seen in Korea, for example, after the Korean War, was a ceasefire that became indefinite. You tend to call it a truce, or armistice, and there's been no real peace agreement between the two sides, which are technically still at war. So a ceasefire in Ukraine may be along the lines where Russian troops are occupying now. That's possible. President Zelensky has already accepted President Trump's proposal for a 30-day ceasefire. And if that were put in place, I imagine there would be some impetus to continue that.
But an actual peace agreement, where then you start talking about de jure acceptance of certain things, the Russians have proposed that it should also contain something that would be “denazifying” in Ukraine. Well, by that, Putin means eliminating the Zelensky government. The Russians have proposed that Ukraine would have to drastically scale back the size of its military, and that Ukraine will not be able to receive Western military equipment. Those are goals that might be discussed in negotiation on a peace element, but typically a ceasefire is a more limited goal that just focuses on stopping the fighting.
Goncharenko: Ukraine can't change the decision of the United States ourselves. But I would ask the administration of the United States and President Trump to consider carefully before doing this. I think it will be a mistake to recognize Crimea to be Russian.
During the first term of President Trump, there was a declaration signed by [then-] Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, which said that Crimea is Ukraine and that the United States will not recognize it as Russia. I think that was the right step from President Trump. He said that Russia controls Crimea, and it happened before he became president. And that's absolutely true. It doesn't mean that we are asking the United States to help us to kick out Russia from Crimea. We think that it is possible to end the hostilities while Russia still controls Crimea. But we will never recognize it.
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