Primea will be liberated. There is no turning back for us,” Tamila Tasheva, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky‘s top representative for the Black Sea peninsula, said in Kyiv on April 25, pushing a Ukrainian plan of priority measures to be adopted in a de-occupied Crimea.

Her comments built on anticipation growing in Ukraine and around the world for Zelensky to live up to the pledge he made last summer and reverse Russia’s nine-year-old illegal annexation of Crimea.

Ahead of an expected counteroffensive from Ukraine, and more than 14 months after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of his neighboring country, there has been a notable shift in narrative on how the war-torn country can regain control of its annexed territory.

Pedestrians walk past a wall painting depicting a map of Crimean peninsula bearing the colors of Russia’s national flag in Moscow, on March 31, 2014.VASILY MAXIMOV/AFP/GETTY

Tasheva told a panel that Zelensky had already instructed officials on how to act “immediately after [Crimea’s] de-occupation.”

Russians are also preparing for the reality that Crimea could soon be on the front lines of the war. That’s what retired U.S. Marine Corps Colonel Mark Cancian, senior adviser for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told Newsweek, pointing to the extensive fortifications that have been spotted along the peninsula’s coast and the Russian Sevastopol naval base in recent weeks, as Russia braces for Ukrainian advance.

Recapturing Crimea is possible, but it will be no easy feat and may not come as quickly as hoped, said Cancian, who assessed that Ukraine will likely launch a series of offensives over a longer period of time to reclaim its occupied territories—the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Crimea.

“It’s not going to be just a single offensive that sweeps the Russians out. They will launch this offensive, it will go on for a month, then it will culminate,” said Cancian, using a military term denoting the point at which a unit is too stretched or exhausted to continue its advance.

“And then there’ll be a rebuilding phase to launch the next defensive maybe in the late summer. You will see that dynamic play out, an attack, gain some territory, stop, rebuild, attack again,” he continued. “That’s a dynamic we saw in the Spanish Civil War, which went on for two and a half years, and the winning side launched a series of offensives, each one of which took more territory.”

Retired Army Lt. General Stephen Twitty, former deputy commander of U.S. European Command and Distinguished Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), agreed, noting that there is approximately 800 miles of disputed border space between Russia and Ukraine.

“I don’t perceive the Ukrainians trying to attack to take the entire 800 miles of border space, all the way from the Donbas, from Kherson, down to Crimea,” Twitty told Newsweek. “What I see is the Ukrainians taking small portions of terrain, like they did last summer…a series of offensive operations instead of a huge, large-scale offensive operation.”

Drones

Ukraine’s first line of attack in a wider attempt to liberate Crimea will likely involve the use of drones, Samuel Bendett, an adjunct senior fellow and advisor at the Center for a New American Security, told Newsweek.

“Drones are going to be the first wave of attack and Russians are very concerned about that… this would be a large-scale strike, and Russians will have no choice but to try and defend themselves against these drones,” Bendett said.

Ukraine has been probing Russian air defenses in Crimea for months by sending aerial drones, said Bendett, adding that Crimea is “definitely high on Ukrainian agenda.”

A yellow terror threat level has been in place in parts of Crimea since April 11, 2022, weeks after Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. Reports of explosions on the peninsula are becoming more frequent.

On April 24, Crimea was rocked by explosions. The Moscow-backed Sevastopol Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said on his Telegram channel that Russia’s Black Sea fleet had repulsed an attack by two maritime drones. Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the drone attacks.

Months earlier, Sergey Aksyonov, the Russian politician acting as head of the Russian-annexed Crimea since 2014, told Russia’s state-run news agency Tass that Ukrainian drones are the biggest threat to the peninsula.

“Ukraine is also starting to fuel longer-range military drones, and Russia is worried,” he continued.

Bendett explained Russia is concerned Ukraine will use a large quantity of these drones to overwhelm Russian air defenses and force the Russians to expend their munitions to try to shoot them down, and that these drone attacks that are going to expose Russian positions and will be followed by longe-range missile strikes with Air Force capability.

Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, told Newsweek in February that the ongoing conflict is “a war of drones.“

“They are the super weapon here,” he said. Drones, Gerashchenko added, cost “much less” than tanks and allow Ukraine to destroy Russian forces “at large distances without entering direct combat contact.”

Extended Siege

Cancian assessed there will be an “extended siege” in a Ukrainian attempt to recapture Crimea.

“When taking Crimea, I would think of it as a siege, not an attack,” he said.

Ukraine will try to cut Crimea off, take out the strategically vital Kerch Strait Bridge that connects Russia with Crimea, and “just squeeze it over time make it untenable to hold.”

“That’s going to be hard, but that’s possible,” said Cancian. “It is more possible now, because the Ukrainian army has gained a lot of equipment, experience and training. So that would help them if they wanted to reclaim Crimea.”

Prevent Re-Supply

Twitty said at some stage, Ukraine will have to take action to prevent Russia from resupplying from Crimea, “whether it be logistics or whether it be troops.”

“Crimea could be in Ukraine’s calculation initially, or they may try and attack somewhere else first that is vulnerable. That could perhaps set them up in a good position to attack Crimea.”

Cancian echoed Twitty’s assessment, saying preventing Russian resupply will be key to liberating the peninsula.

“They’re going to, one hopes, eventually get up to the shoreline and then lay siege to it, take out the bridge, snipe at the boats that would be resupplying Crimea, attack military installations for weeks or months before they tried a ground attack,” Cancian said.

Put Troops on the Ground

In order to hold Crimea, Ukraine will need to put troops on the ground throughout the peninsula, Twitty said.

“You can’t hold it unless you’re able to put troops on the ground, and if you can’t hold that terrain, then you won’t be able to keep it,” he said.

This is why the former deputy commander of U.S. European Command believes Ukraine should not make recapturing Crimea the first stage of its upcoming offensive.

“If they tried to go for Crimea first, in my view, they do not have the long-range fire capability in order to isolate Crimea, and their naval capability is not built up in order to protect Crimea.

“That’s why I advocate taking successive offensive operations until the conditions are made, so that you’re able to fully all into Crimea to destroy the Russians and isolate and seize the peninsula,” Twitty added.

Fuente: Newsweek90; EEUU