Vladimir Putin just tacitly admitted Crimea is not really part of RussiaSince th…

Since the early months of the war, Ukraine has been attacking Russian forces in Crimea with every available weapon, including those provided by the country’s Western allies. Western-supplied missiles have played a central role in the Battle of Crimea, enabling Ukraine to methodically deplete Russian air defenses throughout the peninsula and sink numerous Russian warships. The most eye-catching attack of all came in September 2023, when Ukraine used Western cruise missiles to bomb and partially destroy the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol. If Kherson was an embarrassment for Putin, this was a very personal humiliation. Crucially, it did not lead to World War III. Instead, Putin withdrew most of his remaining warships from Crimea to the relative safety of Russian ports.

The Kremlin’s obvious reluctance to treat “annexed” regions of Ukraine as fully Russian directly contradicts Moscow’s own efforts to portray the occupation of Ukrainian lands as irreversible. While Putin likes to compare himself to Peter the Great and boast of “returning historically Russian lands,” he is evidently in no hurry to grant his Ukrainian “conquests” the kind of unequivocal security commitments that are the ultimate marker of sovereignty. Indeed, after more than a decade, the hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens who have been shipped to occupied Crimea since 2014 will no doubt be wondering how much longer they must wait before the Kremlin finally considers them worthy of protection.

Far from being set in stone, Russia’s territorial ambitions in Ukraine are largely opportunist and will expand or contract based on the military situation. Putin and his colleagues often call on Ukraine to accept the “new territorial realities” created by the current front lines of the war, but their actions send an unmistakable signal that the future of the “annexed” Ukrainian regions is still very much up for debate. Meanwhile, the multiple retreats from “historically Russian land” conducted by Putin’s invading army since 2022 suggest the chances of a nuclear apocalypse have been wildly exaggerated. This should help Kyiv’s Western partners overcome their self-defeating fear of escalation, and encourage them to finally provide Ukraine with the tools, along with the free hand, to finish the job of defeating Russia.

@Ukraine_Report ~ 4rrasoe 🇮🇩❤️🇺🇦