Russia’s Hold On Crimea Is Turning Into Entrapment

The Ukrainians are “systematically in the process of making Crimea uninhabitable for Russian forces”.

This is the view of Ben Hodges, a former commander of American forces in Europe and a senior adviser to NATO.

He makes an excellent point:  Ukraine doesn't need to actually recapture Crimea at this point - it just needs to make it untenable for Russia to maintain their occupation by cutting off supply lines.

Crimea has the one essential ingredient to make it a death-trap for Putin’s ambitions:  it is the central boasting-point in Putin’s entire war effort.  He started the shooting war in Ukraine with the capture of Crimea.  Historically, Russia has seen Crimea as its access hub to the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and Suez. 

It is not true, however, that historically, Crimea has always been part of Russia.  Crimea has a rich history, occupied by the ancient Greeks, Romans, Byzantines and Mongols.  It was only in 1793 that Russia annexed Crimea, and made it home for its Black Sea fleet.  Nevertheless, the Crimean Peninsula has always had a diverse ethnic and religious environment.

Putin claimed that the peninsula had “a sacred and civilizational” to Russia, and was integral to Russian success.

But within Crimea, Russia was not integral to its success.  In the 23 years under Ukrainian authority in Crimea there were no ‘extremists,’ no ‘terrorists,’ and no ‘acts of terror’ for that matter.  But then Russia arrived with its FSB, and suddenly all of these things appeared together.”

Crimea has no natural physical connection to Russia. Crimea is an extension of the Ukrainian mainland.  A majority of Crimea’s residents voted for Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.  Russia’s insistent claims that “Crimea Is Ours” betray a classic imperialist weakness: If you belong in a place, you do not have to keep saying and showing it.  Further, Crimea depends on the Ukrainian mainland for that essential ingredient: water.  For centuries the arid Crimea has relied on the Dnipro River’s water.

Russia is the foreign intruder; the unwanted element.

Yet Putin has sold his concept to the Russian people so fiercely, that it is the one place in Ukraine that Putin would want to hold onto.

Against a state bent on savage conquest, Ukraine is right to press for the clear defeat of the Russian war effort.  Only a fully liberated Ukraine — including Crimea - can promise long-term stability and peace.  Russian retention of Crimea would present an ongoing military threat to Ukraine. If Russia was to retain Crimea as part of some future negotiation (I am not advocating this), it would pose a significant and ongoing threat to Ukraine.

And now Ukrainian forces are staging a counteroffensive and striking military targets inside Crimea.  They recognize that restoring Crimea to Ukraine is the only way that a peace plan could succeed.

According to Politico: “Putin’s 2014 annexation operation ended up disconnecting Crimea from resource flows from Ukraine, including the North Crimean Canal, which still supplied 85 percent of fresh water to the peninsula. His massive vanity bridge, stretching 12 miles over the Kerch Strait from the eastern edge of Crimea to mainland Russia, was completed in 2018 but could not come close to compensating for these losses.”

Russia’s hold on Crimea is tenuous, and a Russian-occupied Crimea will never be resource-secure without Ukraine.

Ukraine is bringing its allies on-side with the idea that Crimea is a target.  Even US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who had previously held that Crimea was a “red line” not to be crossed, indicated that such a framing isn’t nearly as important as it once was. According to those familiar with Blinken’s views, the secretary of state believes “it is solely the Ukrainians’ decision as to what they try to take by force, not America’s” — with the secretary of state “more open to a potential Ukrainian play for Crimea.” As Blinken added this month, there will be no “just” or “durable” peace unless Ukraine’s territorial integrity is restored

If we were to consider a ‘classical’ method of retaking Crimea using a direct attack, there is a step that is needed first.

As Major General Mike Ryan notes: a precursor to any Ukrainian move to retake its Crimean territory is the recapture all of its southern territory. The liberation of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces would be the operational and tactical foundations for any Ukrainian campaign in Crimea.

This would involve hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian casualties, and would be fiercely resisted by Putin.  Any method that involves putting up a map where the loss of land would show up, is not going to play well with the Russian people – or Putin’s propaganda needs.

There is an alternative:  owning it without invading it.

Ukraine could use long-range weapons and drones to isolate Russian troops in Ukraine, and turn them from heroes into hostages.

Ukraine is already demolishing the last of Putin’s bridge to Ukraine.

Now, it has to sever the recently-built Russian alternative: the new rail link along the Sea of Azov.

Kirill Budanov, spokesperson for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said, “Russia has actually been building a railway for more than a year. This process is almost complete and this could pose a serious problem for us.”

Ukrainian experts stress the urgency of neutralising the railway threat. Dmitry Pletenchuk, speaker of the Naval Forces of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, told media, “The railway along the ‘land corridor’ is actually a recognition on the part of the Russian occupiers that the Crimean Bridge is doomed. They are looking for a way to hedge their bets because they are aware that sooner or later, they will have a problem.”

The rail construction has not yet reached Crimea itself, and the existing railroad connection to Crimea is damaged and problematic to use due to Ukrainian shelling, according to Ukraine’s Deputy Permanent Representative of the President Denis Chistikov.  Construction of a railroad from Mariupol to Crimea is still underway, including according to satellite imagery analysis.

The weak point in the new rail line is the damaged railway bridge on the administrative border between Kherson region and the temporarily occupied Crimea.

Ukrainian authorities are of course prioritising efforts to cripple Russia’s logistical capabilities.  They have a choice of weapons.  British Storm Shadow missiles could target the bridge, though initial damage reports and photos show a more limited destruction than the Storm Shadows’ 450 kg warhead would cause.  The Ukrainian-made Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB) has a range of 150 km, and could do the job.

Previously, the Ukrainian partisan underground destroyed a railway bridge on a line between Zaporizhzhia’s Melitopol and Crimea. 

It will be recalled that this railway is needed because Ukraine blew up the Kerch bridge. Vehicles are still able to (barely) use it, but the rail line on the bridge is gone…so the essential logistical re-supply capability of the Russian army in Crimea is reliant on a rail line that is yet unfinished and is terribly vulnerable even when it is completed.

The Kremlin has instructed the Russian border service to strengthen counterintelligence measures with “Special attention is being paid to the protection of automobile and railway bridges between the Chonhar and Crimean peninsulas.”

The irony here is that the more troops the Russians push into Crimea, the greater their need for resupply in terms of food, water and munitions.  At some point, they stop being defenders and instead become hostages.

Putin might face a “Dunkirk moment”, when he has to evacuate the Russian troops by sea.

That will be very difficult, as the Ukrainian sea- and aerial drones have decimated the Russian navy.  Fully one-half of the Russian warships are now underwater, and the rest have been forced to  relocate to the port of Novorossiysk, over 300km away on the Russian mainland.

Russia’s air-defence network in Crimea is also being crippled, with ATACMS strikes on air bases and command-and-control centres. Dzhankoi air base in north-eastern Crimea, and the air base at Belbek near Sevastopol were destroyed.  Belbek in fact was hit repeatedly.  The missiles are virtually undetectable because of their speed and low radar cross-section.

General Hodges says that says that Russian forces have “no place to hide”.  Satellite and aerial reconnaissance provided by NATO allies means that nothing moves in Crimea without Ukrainian knowledge.

 In the meantime fighting has not gone well for Russia on the ‘shoulders’ of Crimea, in the Kherson area.

Ukraine took Kherson north of the Dnipro without a fight, the Russians retreated when they were sufficiently attrited. I suspect the rest of Kherson will go the same. Ukraine only has to cut the land bridge to Crimea for the war to become a total strategic failure for Putin, that land bridge is the only win he has to show for this whole war. I don't think there will be fighting for much longer after that.

Those Crimean port towns along the southeastern coast are not hardened by Russia occupiers against water-based assaults or otherwise from a southerly direction.

Half of that conquered territory in the Donbas was gained in the 2014 Donbas War. Losing Kherson and Crimea would be a loss far greater than they have gained since waging this war, Putin didn’t burn half a million troops, tens of thousands of pieces of heavy equipment, ruin the Black Sea Fleet, and cripple Russia’s economy and international reputation just for a narrow slice of Zaporizhzhia and Luhansk Oblast.

What would even be the point for Russia to continue fighting at that point? Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson are only valuable to Russia because it is a land bridge to Crimea, what use is a land bridge to nowhere? and Russia’s air defence capability only decreases with time, and Ukraine’s air strike capabilities will increase, it will be a merciless shooting gallery.

With Ukraine controlling Crimea Russia will be effectively cut off from the Black Sea, and access to the Mediterranean. I don’t think Putin could survive the political implications of that domestically. I would expect that the moment it is apparent to everyone that Russia no longer owns Crimea, he will pack his bags and quietly disappears himself to a remote luxury compound in the North Korean mountains.

“Crimea is decisive for this war,” said Gen. Ben Hodges. “Ukraine will never be safe or secure, or be able to rebuild their economy, as long as Russia retains Crimea…. And I think increasing numbers of people are recognizing not only the necessity of [retaking Crimea], but also the feasibility.”

We must not let ourselves be distracted from this long view.  Some are excitedly putting their hopes in technology: the arrival of the F-16 aircraft, for example.  The F-16 is 50 years old.  It will be targeted specifically by the Russian air force; in fact, Putin has already put a bonus on it for the pilots who shoot it down.  Every loss will be trumpeted by Putin, just as he did with the Abrams tanks – another techno-fix that was nice but not great.

Forget the technology.

Russia is on a short fuse.  Its banks are failing. They have blocked access to hard-currency accounts. The biggest government spending is on the military, meaning less is being spent on education, health, social security, roads, civilian infrastructure, energy systems…  The recent spate of flooding in central Russia and in Moscow itself exposes the weakness of an aged infrastructure that badly needs re-investment. 

Inflation is terrible; the price of eggs – a staple of Russian diets - went up 40% last year alone. The currency is in free-fall.  Even with the new investment in the military, its logistics are was behind: the production of artillery shells – contrary to what some Western media have reported – is falling behind the West by factor of two.

As one of the Middle Eastern media said: “Russia now faces a choice between another 1918, 1991 or 1998-style economic crisis. Unless Putin withdraws from Ukraine or the Russian people can otherwise force change in the Kremlin’s strategy, a 1918-style collapse is the base scenario, and the 1990s options are optimistic.”

1991 was the crises that led to the break-up of the Soviet Union, and 1918 saw the collapse of the monarchy.

Putin brought this on himself.

He has been trying desperately to safeguard Ukraine.  Kharkiv was their big offensive effort, and they spent 50,000 troops and close to 600 tanks in a matter of weeks.  It was an attempt get a strategic breakthrough before the new US aid arrived, and it failed because Ukraine held on long enough to get the fresh supplies.

Let’s go back to the experts for a final view.  Christopher Cavoli is the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe: “The Russians don’t have the numbers necessary for a strategic breakthrough.  More to the point, they don’t have the skill and the capability to do it; to operate at the scale necessary to break through.

The Chief of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer, added “If you look at the quality of the troops, they have a big problem still in making sure that the new troops are trained to the level of the original troops. The quality of the troops is lower than the original invading army.”

The Crimea can be considered as a large fly-trap for the Russian armies. More soldiers, poorly-trained, are being pushed into that bag by Putin’s genius  -  and we are at 2 years, 3 months, 3 weeks and 4 days of his 3-day war; actually 10 years if you count it from his invasion of Ukraine – and that bag is being engulfed by better soldiers with better training and better equipment, backed by the largest military machines in the world.

Putin’s dream of re-establishing the Russian Empire was a delusion, not a vision.

When you are surrounded by people who do not dare to contradict you, of course, you have no chance of realizing that.

But there are thousands of Russian troops in Crimea who will lack food, munitions, and shelter from above, as they come into real-world contact with the meaning of delusion.

I plan, one day, to be in Ukrainian Crimea, to see the as-yet-unbuilt monuments to the brave soldiers and bright strategists who cleared the land.

It will be a glorious day.  I doubt that I will be alone…

To everyone, thank you for reading Barry’s Substack.

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