By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

What Ukraine Needs to Liberate Crimea

While E.U. leaders arrived in Kyiv for a wartime summit today, Russian President Putin probably believes that his best ally is time. If he can keep hammering Ukraine’s infrastructure while at least holding what he has on the battlefield, perhaps he can create a protracted slugfest in which Russia’s superior manpower will prove decisive. Ukraine sees time as its enemy. It must exploit Russia’s weakened, poorly equipped forces, before additional newly mobilized Russian troops arrive on the battlefield, before Russian defense production hits high gear, and before support from Kyiv’s Western backers dissipates.

President Biden’s updated strategy is an intelligent effort to grapple with a shifting battlefield and figure out how military progress can facilitate a stick settlement. That doesn’t necessarily mean it will work.

Every time the Ukrainian armed forces score a tactical victory, Russia prevents them from fully exploiting it, and vice versa. This state of affairs would suggest a negotiated settlement is in the offing, and though we believe that to be the logical outcome, we are still waiting for someone to budge.

The prospects for a settlement depend, to some degree, on the viability of the Russian economy. The West’s initial response to the invasion was a debilitating campaign that, for a spell, crippled Russia’s economy. Though Russia isn’t out of the woods, it has rebounded well enough to maintain some leverage in the war, in international energy markets, and so on.

 

Two major obstacles have frustrated any attempt to end the stalemate. The first is a precondition that neither side will resume hostilities at a time of their choosing. Both want to retain that right. The second is an unwillingness to cede territory, which is difficult for domestic political reasons. The Ukrainians want control of their whole country. The Russian public would be appalled that all the death and hardships were far less than promised. (A key element on both sides of the war is the management of the public. Ukraine and the U.S. have shown they can manage their public. Russia is the one to watch.)

And while earlier, have argued that European leaders need to look for a successor to Putin. Economics aside, there is no reason to believe either side will crush the other anytime soon. 

The next six months will witness a great deal of human tragedy. Ukraine’s armed forces will face harsh battlefield conditions, and Ukrainian civilians will continue to endure daily Russian attacks. Meanwhile, Russia’s underequipped and poorly led troops will suffer thousands of casualties, destroying the country’s remaining fighting capability. Already, the Russian military has suffered “significantly more than 100,000” deaths and injuries, according to the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley. And thanks to the neglect and cruel indifference of President Vladimir Putin’s regime, thousands more will perish this winter because of the Kremlin’s callous disregard for human life.

With the help of newly promised Western tanks and other weapons, Ukraine’s armed forces will also liberate more territory in the east and south of the country, making it possible to imagine an eventual Ukrainian campaign to retake Crimea. Illegally annexed by Putin in 2014, the peninsula served as a staging ground for Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The occupation of Crimea enables the Russian military to threaten Ukrainian positions from the south and gives Russia’s Black Sea Fleet a forward base for carrying out long-range attacks. But for the first nine months of the war, Kyiv’s Western backers were reluctant to support any military effort to return the territory to Ukraine, partly out of concern that such an attempt would cross a red line for  Putin and invite disastrous Russian retaliation and partly because the peninsula is now home to a sizable number of people who identify with Russia, which could make it more difficult to reintegrate the territory into Ukraine.

For much of last year, while the idea of liberating Crimea remained academic, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was willing to set aside the question of the region’s near-term status. Ukrainian forces were focused on liberating occupied territory outside the peninsula, and the future of Crimea seemed likely to be determined after the end of the war through diplomatic negotiations. But as the war has progressed and Ukraine has liberated large swaths of its territory from occupying Russian forces, Zelensky’s rhetoric around Crimea has shifted. “Crimea is our land, our territory,” he said in a video appeal to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month. “Give us your weapons,” he urged, and Ukraine will retake “what is ours.” And according to The New York Times, the Biden administration has begun to come around to the idea that Ukraine may need to threaten Russia’s foothold on the peninsula to strengthen its negotiating position, even at the risk of escalating the conflict.

If earnest negotiations were to start soon, Zelensky might still be open to a deal that ended the war and deferred the question of Crimea to a later date. But if the fighting drags on through the spring and summer and Ukraine inflicts enormous casualties on Russia while liberating substantial territory, it will become increasingly difficult for Zelensky to grant Putin a face-saving exit from the war and permit Russia’s continued but temporary occupation of Crimea. By the summer, Ukraine will likely begin targeting more of Russia’s military infrastructure in Crimea in preparation for a broader campaign to liberate the peninsula. Instead of waiting for this scenario to play out, risking a longer and more dangerous war that could embroil NATO, Washington should give Ukraine the weapons and assistance it needs to win quickly and decisively in all occupied territories north of Crimea—and to credibly threaten to take the peninsula militarily.

Doing so would force Putin to the negotiating table and create an opening for diplomatic talks. At the same time, the final status of Crimea remains unsettled, offering Putin a path out of Ukraine that doesn’t guarantee his political demise and allowing Ukraine to avoid an enormously costly military campaign that is by no means guaranteed to succeed. The eventual deal would require an immediate reduction of Russian conventional forces on the peninsula and outline a path to a referendum allowing the people of Crimea, including those displaced after the 2014 invasion, to determine the region's final status.

 

Liberation The Hard Way

Contrary to what some skeptical analysts have asserted, a Ukrainian military campaign to liberate Crimea is hardly out of the question. The first step would be to pin down Russia’s forces in the Kherson and Luhansk regions and the northern part of Donetsk. Next, Ukraine would free the remainder of Zaporizhzhia Province and push through southern Donetsk to reach the Sea of Azov, severing Russia’s land bridge to Ukraine. Ukrainian forces would also need to destroy the Kerch Strait Bridge, which connects Russia to the Crimean peninsula and allows Moscow to resupply its troops by road and rail. An explosion knocked out part of the bridge in October 2022, but it may be fully restored by the summer.

Without a land bridge, road, or rail links to Crimea, the Kremlin would be forced to revert to maritime resupply, but ferries and barges would not meet its logistical needs for fighting in Crimea and southern Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces would carry out weeks of strikes on Russian forces and infrastructure to degrade the enemy’s military capability. Targets include logistics hubs, air bases, command and control centers, naval installations, and transportation nodes.

If Ukraine were to succeed in this initial operation phase, it would need to conduct land and amphibious attacks to gain a foothold in Crimea—another herculean effort. Then it would need to build up forces in multiple locations in northern Crimea to seize large strategic installations such as the base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, the Crimean capital of Simferopol, the coastal city of Feodosiya, and the port of Kerch. To achieve these objectives, Ukraine would need to concentrate its forces in Kherson and the newly captured territory in northern Crimea, making them vulnerable to a Russian tactical nuclear strike. For this reason (and because the loss of Crimea could endanger Putin’s regime), the final phase of this campaign would be the most perilous.

Even with a flood of Western support, Ukraine would struggle to undertake such an operation. The German Leopard 2 tanks, British Challenger 2 tanks, American M1 Abrams tanks, and M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles promised in recent weeks would certainly improve the odds. But the Ukrainian military would need hundreds of these vehicles and an air attack capability (either a dozen well-armed combat drones or hundreds of smaller single-use anti-armor drones), thousands of HIMARS rocket rounds and long-range missiles, and tens of thousands of artillery shells. It would also need greater manned airpower and engineering, amphibious, and logistics capacity to penetrate fortified Russian defensive lines, clear hundreds of miles of occupied territory, and conduct amphibious and ground assaults to cross into Crimea and dislodge Russian forces.

 

A Recipe For Disaster

If Ukraine were to succeed in this initial operation phase, it would need to conduct land and amphibious attacks to gain a foothold in Crimea—another herculean effort. Then it would need to build up forces in multiple locations in northern Crimea to seize large strategic installations such as the base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, the Crimean capital of Simferopol, the coastal city of Feodosiya, and the port of Kerch. To achieve these objectives, Ukraine would need to concentrate its forces in Kherson and the newly captured territory in northern Crimea, making them vulnerable to a Russian tactical nuclear strike. For this reason (and because the loss of Crimea could endanger Putin’s regime), the final phase of this campaign would be the most perilous.

Even with a flood of Western support, Ukraine would struggle to undertake such an operation. The German Leopard 2 tanks, British Challenger 2 tanks, American M1 Abrams tanks, and M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles promised in recent weeks would certainly improve the odds. But the Ukrainian military would need hundreds of these vehicles and an air attack capability (either a dozen well-armed combat drones or hundreds of smaller single-use anti-armor drones), thousands of HIMARS rocket rounds and long-range missiles, and tens of thousands of artillery shells. It would also need greater manned airpower and engineering, amphibious, and logistics capacity to penetrate fortified Russian defensive lines, clear hundreds of miles of occupied territory, and conduct amphibious and ground assaults to cross into Crimea and dislodge Russian forces. Western reluctance to fully support Ukraine and defeat Russia—illustrated both by the enduring resistance of Washington and its allies to providing Ukraine with all the weapons systems it needs and by their drawn-out timelines for delivering what they have promised—undercuts Ukraine’s ability to conduct such an offensive and will likely cause the war to stretch deep into 2023. This is a recipe for incremental escalation. Losing Crimea militarily would strike a heavy blow to Putin’s credibility. Hence, as the war drags on, he could resort to clandestine means to warn NATO off from supporting Ukraine, conducting deniable attacks on computer networks and infrastructure in Europe and the United States, or causing industrial chemical or nuclear accidents in Ukraine to demonstrate his willingness to escalate. The West has shown little appetite for risk so far, so Putin may think he can bluff his way to an agreement with Ukraine that meets his demands.

But Western officials are less worried about Russian nuclear saber-rattling than they once were. And in the face of incremental Russian escalation, the Euro-Atlantic resolve to back Ukraine will hold, as it has throughout the war. Instead of folding, the West will respond to the Kremlin’s gradual escalation with gradual increases in military support. As a result, NATO and Russia will continue to inch toward confrontation, progressively increasing the risk that an accident or miscalculation will ignite a full-scale war. This is a formula for a conflagration that scorches NATO and for a potential escalation from conventional to nuclear war.

In reality, Putin has no interest in a fight with NATO. That much he has made clear by reserving no conventional military capability for such a confrontation. But that doesn’t mean the Russian leader isn’t willing to play a dangerous game of chicken with the West. And the longer that game drags on, the greater the chance it will end in tragedy.

Control of terrain and fighting conditions have shifted in recent months, with Ukraine’s allies recalibrating their concerns of broader escalation with Russia. Ukraine has ramped up its calls for aid, building on the trust it gained in fighting with the Western weapons that dominated its requests earlier in the war, including Javelin antitank missiles, drones, and High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers.

 

Credible Threat, Possible Peace

Western powers don’t need to risk a perilous and prolonged war. They can help bring the conflict to a much swifter conclusion by delivering the weapons, equipment, and logistical support that Ukraine needs to expel Russian troops from all occupied territories north of Crimea and to threaten Moscow’s hold on the peninsula credibly.

Right now, Ukraine is winning with only moderate support from the West. The tanks and other materiel recently promised by the United States, Germany, and other European powers will give Ukraine an even greater advantage. But to convince Putin that he is better off withdrawing from Crimea, Western countries will need to do much more. They will need to do away with the artificial constraints they have placed on military assistance to Kyiv and supply the long-range weapons that would allow Ukraine to play offense and defense. And they will need to deliver hundreds of tanks, armored personnel carriers, drones, planes, and other weapons needed to threaten the liberation of Crimea. Instead of allowing the conflict to drag on through the winter, the Biden administration should help Ukraine bring the war to a swift and decisive end. Doing so might allow Crimea’s final status to be determined through negotiation rather than force, sparing Ukraine and Russia the tragedy of another year of fighting. It would also secure Ukrainian democracy, dissuade authoritarian powers from considering military aggression in the future, and reduce the risk of a nuclear escalation that could spiral into an existential conflict.

 

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