Why Crimea could be key to Ukraine winning the war

Over the six months since Russia invaded Ukraine, the ambitions of President Zelensky and his compatriots have only grown. From an early readiness to engage in talks – first in Belarus and then in Istanbul – Kyiv has progressed to an insistence that Ukraine can win, and from there to a definition of victory that includes not just a return to the status quo before the war, but the restoration of Ukraine’s post-independence borders, and now also the recovery of Crimea.

Zelensky himself has often seemed slower than some in his entourage to expand the mission. But he has been adding his voice to those calling for the recovery of Crimea for a few weeks now, with Independence Day prompting these ringing words: ‘Crimea is Ukraine. And we will return it. Whatever the path may be.’

Which is where, for me, Zelensky’s reach finally seemed to risk exceeding even his capable grasp. Heroically though Ukraine’s soldiers have fought, the idea that they might succeed in taking back Crimea from Russia seemed unrealistic in the extreme.

Whatever else Russia might one day be prepared to countenance for the sake of peace – and there is no sign that either Moscow or Kyiv is prepared to settle for anything right now – it has always been unthinkable that it would ever relinquish the strategic peninsula that it annexed, to great national approbation, in 2014.