British historian Mark Galeotti suggested in a Sept. 30 [column]([https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/its-a-hard-road-to-crimea-ukraine-has-a-dilemma-if-it-gets-there-3jcnpmfft) in the London Times that while the Kiev regime may have a military plan for retaking Crimea, it is no political plan and this is making some of Ukraine’s backers nervous. “Even Ukraine’s western allies are, behind the scenes, warning Kyiv that it needs to think a great deal more carefully about how it can reintegrate a population of more than two million, many of whom consider themselves Russian, but also that it accept the possibility that the peninsula might be the key to peace,” Galeotti writes.
The Ukrainian military strategy, he says, is to do what it did in Kherson in the fall of last year, which was to put pressure on it until the Russians decided that the cost of holding it was greater than the benefit. But Crimea is not Kherson. “Most Russians genuinely believe it is rightly theirs, and it matters to them in a way no other part of Ukraine does,” Galeotti writes. “As one British Ministry of Defence source said, ‘I don’t think [Putin] believes he could survive its loss,’ and for this reason the official would ‘breathe a sigh of relief if Kyiv isn’t in a position to assault Crimea this side of the new year.’”
