If one takes Ukrainian officials at their word, Russia could face as early as this summer Crimean War II. By late spring, much of the new Western armor is to be in place. Ukraine’s notoriously muddy steppes will have dried out. Tanks and armored personnel carriers will be able to leave the asphalt and roam the countryside. 

“Crimea will be returned in a combined way: both by force and diplomacy,” the director of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, Kirill Budanov, predicted to Liga.net last month, before the promises of aid tumbled out of Western capitals. “But without power, nothing will happen. Our units will go there with weapons in their hands.”  

When the reporter asked Mr. Budanov for a summer vacation recommendation, he responded: “I will recommend Crimea. This is the pearl of Ukraine, which has been waiting for Ukrainian tourists for a long time.”

President Zelenskiy, in one of his nightly fireside chats, told the nation that the return of Crimea after nine years of Russian control would “mean the restoration of true peace.” He added: “The Russian potential for aggression will be completely destroyed when the Ukrainian flag will be back in its rightful place — in the cities and villages of Crimea.”

Speaking to American audiences this month, the Ukrainian former defense minister, Andriy Zagorodnyuk, has argued for Ukraine reasserting control of Crimea. “We believe that a military solution is possible, Russian forces will be exhausted,” he told an Atlantic Council roundtable. Vladimir Putin “needs to lose. Ukraine needs to win, and that includes Crimea. There can be no half measures.”

Writing this month in Foreign Affairs, Mr. Zagorodnyuk said: “Russia has turned Crimea into a large military base, which it used to launch its sweeping invasion.” In an essay titled “The Case for Taking Crimea,” he wrote: “Ukraine cannot be safe or rebuild its economy until Crimea is out of Russian hands, and so Kyiv will not stop fighting until it regains the province….”

“Unless Ukraine is completely liberated,” Mr. Zagorodnyuk added, “Russia will use any remaining footholds in the country to launch the next invasion once Moscow has rearmed.”

Jutting into the Black Sea, the Crimean peninsula is strategic real estate fought over since the start of recorded time. Control has shifted from Greeks to Romans to Mongols to Genoans to Turks. In 1783, Grigory Potemkin wrested control of Crimea for Catherine the Great.

In 1954, the Soviet premier, Nikita Khruschev, transferred control to Ukraine from Russia. After Crimeans voted to go along with the rest of Ukraine in declaring independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia retained basing rights for its Black Sea fleet at Crimea’s deep-water harbor, Sevastopol.

Crimea allows Russia to control shipping through Ukraine’s two seas — the Black and the Azov. About 90 percent of Ukraine’s grain and metal exports leave by ship. After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, it squeezed shipping through the Azov, partly by building a low road and rail bridge from Russia’s mainland to the peninsula.

On February 24, when Russia launched its full-bore attack on Ukraine, units poured north from Crimea, seizing much of the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions. Today, some military analysts speculate that Russia’s garrisons on Crimea are undermanned because so many troops shifted north.

The Biden administration has not publicly encouraged Ukraine to attack Crimea. Washington’s line is that Russian soldiers should be pushed back to the February 24 lines of control, an area that does not include Crimea. Prominent American voices, though, spoke out this month in favor of Ukraine retaking Crimea. They argue control would be key for Ukraine’s postwar security.

“Ukraine will isolate Crimea over the next two to three months,” the Army’s former top commander in Europe, Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, now retired, predicted to Times Radio two weeks ago. “I believe Ukraine will liberate Crimea by the end of August, the end of summer.” 

A former supreme allied commander in Europe, Wesley Clark, told the Atlantic Council roundtable: “Can Ukraine regain control of Crimea? Absolutely yes.”

Some analysts worry Mr. Putin could go nuclear if faced with the loss of Crimea. The 2014 annexation was wildly popular inside Russia, sending the strongman’s approval ratings to the highest levels of his 22 years in power. In response to Ukrainian promises to retake the peninsula, a Crimean parliamentarian, Yuri Gempel, told RIA Novosti: “The Kyiv fascist regime and its plans are doomed. Their statements are nothing more than aggressive crazy chatter.”

During the first year of the war, though, Ukraine has repeatedly crossed Mr. Putin’s “red lines” on Crimea. First, Ukrainian missiles sank the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, the Moskva. After the fleet retreated to Sevastopol harbor, Ukrainian maritime drones and missiles attacked the fleet and nearby air bases and ammunition dumps.

Then, on October 6, the day after Mr. Putin’s 70th birthday, a truck bomb severely damaged the Crimean bridge. Only four years earlier, Mr. Putin had personally inaugurated the $3.7 billion structure.

History does not give much comfort to the Kremlin. The first Crimean War, between 1853 and 1856, ended in defeat for Russia at the hands of a British-French-Turkish alliance. “The image many Russians had built up of their country — the biggest, richest and most powerful in the world — had suddenly been shattered.

“Russia’s backwardness had been exposed,” Orlando Figes wrote in his 2010 history, “Crimea: the Last Crusade.” The Crimean disaster had exposed the shortcomings of every institution in Russia, not just the corruption and incompetence of the military command.”

On the positive side, the shock pushed Tsar Alexander II to undertake reforms. In 1861, he freed the serfs. In 1867, after a delay caused by our Civil War, he sold his failing American colony, Alaska, to America.