Ukraine planning to reclaim occupied Crimea
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, published the plan as Ukraine’s military prepares for a spring counteroffensive in hopes of making new, decisive gains after more than 13 months of war to end Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, but most of the world does not recognize it as Russian territory. The peninsula’s future status will be a key feature in any negotiations on ending the current fighting.
The Kremlin has demanded that Ukraine recognize Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea and acknowledge other land gains made by Moscow as a condition for peace.
Kyiv has ruled out peace talks until Russian troops leave all occupied territories, including Crimea.
Danilov suggested prosecuting Ukrainians who worked for the Moscow-appointed administration in Crimea.
All Russian citizens who moved to Crimea after 2014 should be expelled, and all real estate deals made under Russian rule nullified, he wrote on Facebook.
As part of the plan, Danilov also called for dismantling a 12-mile bridge that Russia built to Crimea. In October, a truck bomb severely damaged the span, which is Europe’s longest and a symbol of Moscow’s conquest of the peninsula.
Russia has repaired the damage and restored the flow of supplies to Crimea, which has served as a key hub for Moscow’s forces during the war. Kyiv did not claim responsibility for the bomb, but Ukrainian officials had repeatedly threatened to strike the bridge.
Danilov also argued for renaming the city of Sevastopol, which has been the main base for the Russian Black Sea fleet since the 19th century.
The Moscow-appointed head of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, shrugged off Danilov’s plan.
“It would be wrong to seriously treat comments by sick people. They must be cured, and that’s what our military is doing now,” Razvozhayev told the Russian state news agency Tass.
Danilov published his plan as Ukrainian troops prepared to use newly supplied Western weapons, including dozens of battle tanks, to break through Russian defenses and reclaim occupied areas in a counteroffensive expected as early as this month.
Russian troops are trying to capture the key Ukrainian stronghold of Bakhmut as part of their efforts to take all of Donetsk province, which is part of the Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland.
Russia’s latest rocket and artillery attacks have killed four civilians and wounded 15 others since Saturday, according to the Ukrainian military. The victims included two men who died in the northern region of Sumy early Sunday when a milk truck was hit.
Ukrainian authorities reported that Russian shelling killed an additional six civilians later Sunday in Kostiantynivka, a small city in Donetsk province.
In Russian-occupied Melitopol, the Moscow-installed administration said a Ukrainian rocket barrage Sunday struck a locomotive depot and damaged an apartment building in the southern city, wounding six civilians.
Ukrainian officials didn’t take direct responsibility for that attack. But the city’s Kyiv-appointed mayor, Ivan Fedorov, jubilantly referred to blasts at the locomotive depot as a culmination of an “explosive week for the occupiers” that featured other hits over the last few days.
