How Russia’s grab of Crimea 10 years ago led to war with Ukraine and rising tensions with the West

A decade ago, President Vladimir Putin seized Crimea from Ukraine, a daring land grab that set the level for Russia to invade its neighbor in 2022.

The fast and cold seizure of the diamond-shaped peninsula, house to Russia’s Black Sea fleet and a well-liked holiday website, touched off a wave of patriotism and despatched Putin’s recognition hovering. “Crimea is ours!” turned into a well-liked slogan in Russia.

Now that Putin has been anointed to some other six-year time period as president, he’s decided to prolong his gains in Ukraine amid Russia’s battlefield successes and waning Western reinforce for Kyiv.

Putin has been imprecise about his objectives in Ukraine as the combating grinds into a 3rd yr at the expense of many lives on all sides, however some of his best lieutenants nonetheless communicate of taking pictures Kyiv and reducing Ukraine’s get admission to to the Black Sea.

The greatest battle in Europe since World War II has despatched tensions between Moscow and the West hovering to ranges hardly ever noticed throughout even the chilliest moments of the Cold War.

When he seized Crimea in 2014, Putin mentioned he persuaded Western leaders to back off by way of reminding them of Moscow’s nuclear functions. It’s a caution he has issued frequently, significantly after the get started of his full-scale invasion; in final month’s state-of-the-nation cope with, when he (*10*) the West dangers nuclear war if it deepens its involvement in Ukraine; and once more on Wednesday, when he mentioned he would use that arsenal if Russia’s sovereignty is threatened.

Analyst Tatiana Stanovaya says Putin feels extra assured than ever amid “the Kremlin’s growing faith in Russia’s military advantage in the war with Ukraine and a sense of the weakness and fragmentation of the West.”

The senior fellow at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center famous that Putin’s speech final month “created an extremely chilling impression of an unraveling spiral of escalation.”

The 71-year-old Kremlin chief has solid the war in Ukraine as a life-or-death battle in opposition to the West, with Moscow able to give protection to its beneficial properties at any value. His obsession with Ukraine used to be transparent in an interview with U.S. conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, with Putin handing over a protracted lecture that sought to turn out his declare that the bulk of its territory traditionally belonged to Russia.

He made that argument 10 years ago when he mentioned Moscow wanted to give protection to Russian audio system in Crimea and reclaim its territory.

When Ukraine’s Kremlin-friendly president used to be ousted in 2014 by way of mass protests that Moscow referred to as a U.S.-instigated coup, Putin answered by way of sending troops to overrun Crimea and calling a plebiscite on becoming a member of Russia, which the West pushed aside as unlawful.

Russia then annexed Crimea on March 18, 2014, even though the transfer used to be best identified across the world by way of international locations comparable to North Korea and Sudan.

Weeks later, Moscow-backed separatists introduced an rebellion in jap Ukraine, fighting Kyiv’s forces. The Kremlin denied supporting the rebel with troops and guns regardless of ample proof to the opposite, together with a Dutch court docket’s discovering {that a} Russia-supplied air protection machine downed a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet over jap Ukraine in July 2014, killing all 298 other people aboard.

Russian hard-liners later criticized Putin for failing to seize all of Ukraine that yr, arguing it used to be simply imaginable at a time when the executive in Kyiv used to be in disarray and its army in shambles.

Putin as a substitute sponsored the separatists and opted for a peace deal for jap Ukraine that he was hoping would permit Moscow to identify regulate over its neighbor. The 2015 Minsk agreement brokered by way of France and Germany, following painful defeats suffered by way of Ukrainian forces, obliged Kyiv to be offering the separatist areas wide autonomy, together with permission to shape their very own police drive.

Had it been totally carried out, the settlement would have allowed Moscow to use the separatist spaces to dictate Kyiv’s insurance policies and save you it from ever becoming a member of NATO. Many Ukrainians noticed the deal as a betrayal of its nationwide pursuits.

Russia considered the election of political beginner Volodymyr Zelenskyy as president in 2019 as an opportunity to revive the anemic Minsk deal. But Zelenskyy stood his flooring, leaving the settlement stalled and Putin more and more exasperated.

When Putin introduced his “special military operation” in Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, he was hoping the nation would fall as temporarily and simply as Crimea. But the strive to seize Kyiv collapsed amid stiff Ukrainian resistance, forcing Russian troops to withdraw from the outskirts of the capital.

More defeats adopted in fall 2022, when Russian troops retreated from huge portions of jap and southern Ukraine below a swift counteroffensive by way of Kyiv.

Fortunes modified final yr when some other Ukrainian counteroffensive failed to lower Russia’s land hall to Crimea. Kyiv’s forces suffered heavy casualties once they made botched makes an attempt to damage thru multilayered Russian defenses.

As Western reinforce for Ukraine dwindled amid political infighting in the U.S. and Kyiv ran quick of guns and ammunition, Russian troops have intensified power alongside the over 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) entrance line, depending on masses of 1000’s of volunteer infantrymen and the newly offered guns that changed early losses.

After taking pictures the key jap stronghold of Avdiivka final month, Russia has driven deeper into the Donetsk area as Zelenskyy pleads with the West for extra guns.

Testifying sooner than the U.S. Senate final week, CIA Director William Burns emphasised the urgency of U.S. army support, announcing: “It’s our assessment that with supplemental assistance, Ukraine can hold its own on the front lines through 2024 and into early 2025.”

Without it, he said, “Ukraine is likely to lose ground — and probably significant ground — in 2024,” adding, “you’re going to see more Avdiivkas.”

The dithering Western support has put Ukraine in an increasingly precarious position, analysts say.

“Russia is gaining momentum in its assault on Ukraine amid stalled Western aid, making the coming months critical to the direction of conflict,” said Ben Barry, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, in an analysis. “In a worst-case scenario, parts of Kyiv’s front line could be at risk of collapse.”

Putin demurred when asked how deep into Ukraine he would like to forge, but he repeatedly stated that the line of contact should be pushed long enough to protect Russian territory from long-range weapons in Ukraine’s arsenal. Some members of his entourage are less reticent, laying out plans for new land grabs.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council who has sought to curry Putin’s favor with regular hawkish statements, mentioned Kyiv and the Black Sea port of Odesa.

“Ukraine is Russia,” he bluntly declared recently, ruling out any talks with Zelenskyy’s government and suggesting a “peace formula” that would see Kyiv’s surrender and Moscow’s annexation of the entire country.

Russian defense analysts are divided over Moscow’s ability to pursue such ambitious goals.

Sergei Poletaev, a Moscow-based military expert, said the Russian army has opted for a strategy of draining Ukraine resources with attacks along the front line in the hope of achieving a point when Kyiv’s defenses would collapse.

“What matters is the damage inflicted to the enemy, making the enemy weaken faster,” he said.

Others say Russia’s attacks seeking to exhaust Ukraine’s military are costly for Moscow, too.

Russian and Ukrainian forces are locked in a stalemate that gives Moscow little chance of a breakthrough, said Ruslan Pukhov, head of the Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies think tank.

“The Ukrainian defense is quite strong, and it doesn’t allow Russian troops to achieve anything more substantial than tactical gains,” he said.

Such a positional war of attrition “may well be waged for years,” Pukhov added, with each events looking ahead to the different to “face internal changes resulting in a policy shift.”

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