Crimea

Crimea as a Focal Point for the Ukraine War

Summary

The current events in Ukraine make sense (to me) if the West is seen as the aggressor with a primary goal being the (re)conquest of Crimea. Thus, the summer 2023 Ukrainian offensive (in the direction of Crimea) is a last gasp attempt to fulfill the initial objectives of the war.

The main inspiration for this idea is an article from April 2023 which made sense to me at the time and has improved in my estimation with age and additional data points: 
The Planning Of The Ukraine Invasion From The Russian Point Of View, by Gaius Baltar

Western Objectives

1. To tie down the Russian Army in the Donbass

2. To carry out a surprise attack on the Crimean peninsula

3. To bog down and bleed the Russian Army in the Donbass with the goal of engineering a regime change in Russia

Russian Objectives

Objective 1 (main objective): To capture Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts to create a buffer zone between Crimea and the rest of Ukraine. 

Objective 2 (secondary objective): Advance on Kiev in an extremely threatening manner. The Ukrainians would have no choice but to take the threat seriously and move forces toward Kiev, including the forces intended for the Crimean operation.

Objective 3 (secondary objective): To force Ukraine to negotiate peace on Russian terms. The Russians most likely assumed that if the Kherson/ Zaporizhzhia buffer operation was successful the Ukrainians might want to negotiate. They would want to negotiate not only because Kiev was threatened, but primarily because their main objective, the capture of Crimea, had been thwarted. This part of the plan was partly successful because the Ukrainians were ready to sign a treaty before the Americans and the British intervened.

Some Data Points

I won't try to list all the data points which support (or contradict) his hypothesis here. Rather, this is more of a notepad.

• March 16, 2014: In a rejection of the coup and the unconstitutional installation of an anti-Russian government in Kiev, Crimeans vote by 97 percent to join Russia in a referendum with 89 percent turn out. The Wagner private military organization is created to support Crimea. Virtually no shots are fired and no one was killed in what Western media wrongly portrays as a “Russian invasion of Crimea.” (from Ukraine Timeline Tells the Story)

• March 24, 2021: On that day, Volodymyr Zelensky issued a decree for the recapture of the Crimea, and began to deploy his forces to the south of the country. At the same time, several NATO exercises were conducted between the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, accompanied by a significant increase in reconnaissance flights along the Russian border.

• March 26, 2022: Biden admits in a speech in Warsaw that the U.S. is seeking through its proxy war against Russia to overthrow the Putin government. (from Ukraine Timeline Tells the Story)

• June 5, 2023: Shunning diplomacy, Ukraine plans to take Crimea 'hostage'

According to the Washington Post, a key component of the Ukrainian government’s strategy is to surround Crimea with heavy weaponry, thereby “holding hostage the peninsula that is home to Russia’s prized Black Sea Fleet.”  The plan was previewed four months ago by senior US official Victoria Nuland, who declared that “Ukraine is not going to be safe unless Crimea is at a minimum, at a minimum, demilitarized,” and that “we are supporting that.” 

• July 17, 2023:  Ukraine attacked for a second time one of Russian President Vladimir’s proudest achievements: the 11.25-mile Kerch Bridge linking Crimea to Russia.  Ukraine initially attacked the bridge last October. The Biden administration’s role in both attacks was vital. [Seymour Hersh]

• July 26, 2023: Ukraine has launched the main thrust of its counteroffensive, throwing in thousands of troops held in reserve, many of them Western-trained and equipped, two Pentagon officials said on Wednesday, hours after Russian officials reported major Ukrainian attacks in the southern Zaporizhzhia region. [NYTimes] 

• August 5, 2023:  Early this year, Ukraine began to outfit two separate ‘army corps’ of maneuver brigades specifically for the coming ‘counter-offensive’. These were the 9th Corps and the 10th Corps. The 9th Corps was meant to be the—mostly—NATO-armed and trained one which was famously revealed in the Pentagon leaks.  The 9th experienced catastrophic losses from the start of the offensive on June 4th onward.  So the 9th Corps was not able to reach Russia’s first line of defense and the brigades had appeared to be too degraded to go on any further, many of them withdrawn to refit/reconstitute in the rear. The 10th Corps was then injected prematurely to take over, which is what this new ‘second phase’ has been all about since the end of July. In the first two weeks of the counteroffensive, as much as 20 percent of the weaponry Ukraine sent to the battlefield was damaged or destroyed, according to U.S. and European officials. “The counteroffensive itself hasn’t failed; it will drag on for several months into the fall,” said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who recently visited the front lines. But analysts question whether this second wave, relying on attacks by smaller units, will generate enough combat power and momentum to allow Ukrainian troops to push through Russian defenses. Gian Luca Capovin and Alexander Stronell, analysts with the British security intelligence firm Janes, said that the small-unit attack strategy “is extremely likely to result in mass casualties, equipment loss and minimal territorial gains” for Ukraine. [Simplicius76, NYTimes]

I've been trying to figure out why Ukraine and the West have been going all out in this offensive in the direction of Crimea.  They have been taking massive losses of soldiers and equipment with no significant gains.  This makes sense if the war was originally offensive in nature for the West -- i.e. they planned and expected to take Crimea all along.  The current offensive is a belated follow through of the original plan which was initialled derailed by Russia's offensive in the south. The West doesn't have any other plans consistent with their original objective.