In the coming weeks and months, Ukrainian forces have a real chance at achieving victory on the battlefield. The path to victory is anything but straightforward. But one way or another, it likely passes through Crimea, The Washington Post reports.
Ever since Russia first invaded and occupied parts of Ukraine in 2014, far too many Western policymakers assumed that Crimea was Russia’s real red line — the one territorial conquest it could never part with. Russia itself has spent considerable energy stressing this to Western interlocutors since then.
In reality, Crimea represents a point of maximum leverage. It is exactly where Ukraine needs to make battlefield gains to bring this war to a successful conclusion.
There are signs that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is starting to ramp up. While Ukraine will ultimately strike where it anticipates the most favorable outcome, many observers think Ukrainian forces will eventually have to make a push in the south to cut the land bridge running from Russia through occupied Donbas to Crimea. If successful, such a move could be decisive. It would divide Russian forces arrayed across Ukraine’s south, and even potentially put Crimea itself in a vulnerable position.
The Kremlin has had time to dig in to defensive positions behind thousands of miles of front lines in the south and east. But the defenses are of uneven quality. Some of the fortifications have been thrown up hastily because of the fear that the Ukrainian counteroffensive would start sooner rather than later. Several Russian military bloggers have dubbed these fragile fortifications “the Fabergé line,” after Fabergé eggs.
A Ukrainian advance that put Crimea within Ukrainian artillery range would create a huge and expensive logistical problem for Russian President Vladimir Putin. His military and civilian administration in Crimea would be particularly threatened if Ukraine were also able to fully destroy, or even keep under steady fire, the bridge over the Kerch Strait connecting the peninsula directly with Russia. Such a setback would have political ramifications in Moscow, and the fissures that we currently see in the Putin regime would grow.
