Can Ukraine ever win over Crimea and the Donbas?

It’s a topic that few are willing to talk about, but at some point – and especially if it is to get the victory it seeks – Ukraine will have to confront a looming problem: what to do with millions of its own citizens who currently have closer ties to Russia than they do to Ukraine.  

President Volodymyr Zelensky has made it quite clear that Ukraine intends to reclaim all of its territory – that includes a large chunk of the Donbas region that pro-Russian separatists, aided by Russian troops, turned into unrecognised pseudo-states in 2014, and the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed that March. 

It’s one thing liberating territories that Russian troops only took last year when it deployed its entire war machine in a brutal and atrocious campaign to subjugate Ukraine – with its air force bombing cities and its regular troops slaughtering civilians.