Winter Over, Ukraine Breaks the Ice on Crimea

Is Ukraine really ready to negotiate on Crimea? The ultimate status of the strategic peninsula that Russia in 2014 seized from Ukraine and subsequently annexed illegally is both part and parcel of the independent Ukraine that emerged as the former Soviet Union broke up, and a place that Vladimir Putin views as part of Russia. President Zelensky has said repeatedly in the past year that Crimea will be liberated. That makes new comments from one of his advisors, Andriy Sybiha, to the effect that Ukraine could eventually negotiate on Crimea, so surprising. In an interview published in the the Financial Times, Mr. Sybil said, “If we will succeed in achieving our strategic goals on the battlefield and when we will be on the administrative border with Crimea, we are ready to open [a] diplomatic page to discuss this issue.” Those goals were a reference to what has been whispered about all winter: a spring counteroffensive by the Ukrainian army against Russian forces entrenched in parts of eastern and southern Ukraine. It was not immediately clear if Mr. Sybiha was speaking on behalf of Mr. Zelensky’s office or espousing his own or emerging views about the Crimean juggernaut. Yet he elaborated that as the anticipated counteroffensive draws near, Mr. Zelensky has been discussing the fate of Crimea in more detail with members of his inner circle. In any event, the comments are possibly the strongest signal yet of Ukraine’s willingness to enter into some kind of negotiations with Moscow since a preliminary round of talks broke down about a year ago. The use of the phrase “administrative border” could be a tacit acknowledgement that the political realities of heavily fortified Crimea are vastly different from that of the embattled eastern Ukrainian regions. Secretary Blinken has previously called Crimea a red line for Mr. Putin. A former British prime minister, Boris Johnson, a staunch ally of Ukraine and friend of Mr. Zelensky, has echoed that sentiment. All this does not necessarily add up to a sea change in Kyiv’s thinking, though, nor does it mean that territorial concessions are in the forecast. Mr Sybiha added: “It doesn’t mean that we exclude the way of liberation [of Crimea] by our army.” That is precisely what some other Ukrainian pronouncements have been pointing to in recent days. On April 5 another adviser to the office of the President Zelensky, Mikhail Podolyak, said that Ukraine could retake Crimea in five to seven months. In his view, Russia does not have the resources to hold onto Crimea as well as the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, each in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas, where most of the fighting is now happening.It goes without saying that Moscow, as the invading force and occupier, is not a plain dealer. Mistrust between the two sides is so high that pronouncements made today could be meaningless tomorrow. Last month the German magazine Bild, citing NATO analysts, reported that the next six months will be critical for the war. According to the report, the main directions of Ukraine’s counteroffensive will be Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia, but not necessarily Crimea. Kyiv does seek at a minimum to sever Russia’s land communications with Crimea. If it could also demolish the Kerch Strait Bridge, which connects the peninsula to mainland Russia, it would be seen by Ukraine’s armed forces as an added advantage. Russia, in the meantime, appears to be girding for battle on the northern perimeter of the Crimean peninsula. A series of satellite photos published by the Washington Post this week clearly shows a growing network of trenches and other defensive fortifications there, some of them rather elaborate. Yet it looks increasingly likely that Ukraine will not attempt to seize the illegally annexed peninsula in the classic military sense. According to the military analyst Michael Kofman, who is cited in the Washington Post report, “Kyiv could pursue a strategy of exhaustion by establishing fire control over access to Crimea.” He added that “over time it could make the situation in Crimea untenable, such that Russia might have to negotiate over its status.”Targeted Ukrainian strikes against Russian military assets have increased in the months since August, with dozens of strikes by attack drones that have inflicted damage to Russian air bases. It is likely that such attacks, which officially Ukraine does not acknowledge, will continue or even increase as the weather improves. Are negotiations going to happen by the summer? It is much too soon to say, but it is worth recalling that Russia and Ukraine have already cooperated on the issues of prisoner exchanges and the secure export of Ukrainian grain. If the two sides that are presently at each other’s throats in the most literal sense can manage to sit at the same table, the impetus for doing so will likely come from nowhere else but these key capitals: Moscow and Kyiv.

Winter Over, Ukraine Breaks the Ice on Crimea

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