For many, the thought of Ukraine recapturing Crimea is farfetched. However, recent analysis has demonstrated how a litany of Russian failures have opened up new pathways for the Ukrainian military to retake the peninsula.
While many analysts in the West see a Ukrainian assault on Crimea as flight of fancy, Kyiv never softened its rhetoric on the need reunify all Ukrainian territory lost since 2014.
Even in 2021, Ukraine’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba took to Twitter to announce that the government had approved the strategy for deoccupation and reintegration of the Crimean Peninsula. Constituting part of a three-pillar approach to reunify the entirety of Ukraine.
Although, much has changed since 2021. And a lot has also changed since the February invasion.
Estimates from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in late March predicted that Russia had already lost 25 per cent of its fighting force. Perhaps an inflated number, though a hasty withdrawal from the surrounding suburbs of Kyiv with fierce opposition from a distributed network of irregular warfare practitioners is likely proof that Russian manpower and technology was insufficient in overcoming their Ukrainian adversaries.
So, can Ukraine retake Crimea?