It is a “very important” region, seen as the “crown jewel” of Vladimir Putin’s regime, but Ukraine will not give up Crimea and wants 2023 to be the year of restoration. The target is already on Kyiv’s agenda, confirms Maria Tomac, head of the Crimean Platform – part of the delegation advising the Ukrainian presidency on the region: “We are preparing for the moment when the evacuation will take place by order of the President of Ukraine” – And a plan for this is already in the works.
The goal is ambitious, but not an impossible dream. Peter Dickinson, analyst at Think tank The Atlantic Center and editor-in-chief of UkraineAlert do not doubt that the recapture of Crimea is “militarily feasible.” However, in remarks to the Observer newspaper, the expert notes that the Kremlin “certainly will not react lightly” to a possible military defeat and could respond with “extreme actions”, such as “threats with nuclear weapons”.
All this because “with the loss of Crimea, Putin will probably lose power and this will be the end of him,” Peter Dickinson defends, stating that “Russia has been very clear about the peninsula’s future” and that Moscow interprets the reoccupation of the peninsula by Kievan forces as “Red line”. In Russian, Crimea is very different from Donbass, Zaporizhia and Kherson. It’s a very specific case.”
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