"Ukraine approves strategy to “recover” Crimea, threatening all-out war with Russia"
19 March 2021
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba announced this week that the country’s National Security and Defense Council had approved a strategy that is aimed at retaking Crimea and reintegrating the strategically important peninsula.
Following the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union, the port of Sevastopol had been leased to Russia by several successive Ukrainian governments. Its potential loss following the US-backed ousting of the President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 was widely seen as one of the primary motivators in Russia annexing the militarily strategic peninsula.
As Kuleba and Kiev are well aware, any attempt to impose its “full sovereignty” over one of the Russian Navy’s most important warm water ports on the Black Sea would result in a full-scale war that threatens the outbreak of a third world war.
In its reckless military escalation, the Zelensky government is also driven by a deep social and political crisis in Ukraine itself. Its political support has fallen sharply as the country’s economy and health care system have been devastated by COVID-19, with no significant vaccination effort in sight. There is a real danger that the Ukrainian ruling class, driven by a deepening domestic crisis, is trying to divert these internal tensions outward, resulting in a war that would threaten the lives of millions.
