What if Ukraine retakes Crimea?

A week or so ago, a senior European diplomat visiting Washington suggested to me that Ukraine could take back Crimea.

My first reaction was incredulity. I had difficulty accepting that Ukraine could manage such a radical breakthrough while remaining bogged down in a World War I-type conflict, despite its innovative development and use of weaponry, notably drones of all kinds.

Yet once that diplomat outlined the details of his musings, his argument no longer seemed implausible. To recover the peninsula, Ukraine would have to neutralize Russia’s Black Sea fleet, establish air dominance and destroy all major Russian facilities in or near Crimea. And Kyiv has already accomplished the first of these three necessary conditions.

Although roughly two-thirds of the Black Sea fleet survives, it is huddled in the Russian port of Novorossiysk, on the Black Sea’s northeastern shore. Given Ukraine’s successful use of land-based drones and unmanned craft packed with explosives to destroy or disable more than 25 Russian surface ships, it is unlikely that the surviving fleet would emerge from its sanctuary to play a material role in defending Crimea.

Ukraine’s ability to dominate the skies over Crimea, and to eliminate Russian air bases and infrastructure that could support Moscow’s challenge to that dominance, is a very different matter. For Kyiv to have any hope of succeeding in this regard, it would require both air and long-range strike assets that it does not currently possess.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has announced that Ukraine will, at long last, begin to receive F-16 aircraft later this summer. The Netherlands, Belgium, Norway and Denmark will be contributing about 80 aircraft to the embattled state. Greece is preparing to decommission 32 older F-16s and transfer them to the U.S., where they will be upgraded and sent on to Ukraine.

The F-16 will play a critical role in defending Ukrainian air space. That same capability would, of course, enable it to face off over Crimea against Russian fighters. But the F-16 also has a powerful air-to-ground capability. As the Air Force puts it: the F-16 “has proven itself in air-to-air combat and air-to-surface attack….In an air-to-surface role, the F-16 can fly more than 500 miles (860 kilometers), deliver its weapons with superior accuracy, defend itself against enemy aircraft, and return to its starting point.”

However, the administration’s willingness to lift its hold on the transfer of F-16s to Ukraine has not been matched by the number of pilots that America and its NATO allies have trained for their missions. Nor has the White House responded positively to President Volodymyr Zelensky’s repeated and urgent pleas for both longer-range ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles and more air-defense systems, notably Patriot.

No doubt, the Biden administration does not envisage Kyiv employing the F-16s in a long-range air-to-ground role. Yet were America and its allies to train a sufficient number of Ukrainian pilots for this mission; were Ukraine to receive sufficient F-16s to carry it out; were long-range ATACMS made available to supplement the aircraft; and were more air-defense systems provided to Kyiv’s forces, Ukraine might then have the wherewithal to destroy much of the Russian air bases, infrastructure and supply lines leading into and around Crimea.

Recent reports indicate that Ukrainian attacks on that infrastructure and those supply lines, coupled with massive personnel losses, are having a deleterious effect on the morale of Moscow’s ground troops. Russia has suffered more than a half-million casualties since it launched its invasion in February 2022. Moreover, the number of losses has accelerated. In the last few months, Russia has suffered some 70,000 casualties and averaged 1,200 killed or wounded each day.

Ukrainian forces have demonstrated their ability to systematically knock out Russian air-defense missile systems and radar stations located near Kharkiv. This lays the groundwork for operating the F-16s when they arrive. Were they provided the wherewithal to do the same in Crimea, thereby enabling the F-16s to dominate airspace over the peninsula, it is not unthinkable that many Russian fighting units might simply surrender to attacking Ukrainian forces. Or they might seek to escape to Russian territory over the Kerch bridge, should Russia manage to keep the bridge relatively intact.

Although Zelensky continues to speak of total victory, there is little doubt that both the U.S. and its allies would prefer to see Ukraine agree to negotiate an end to the war. Taking Crimea, or even threatening to do so, would provide Ukraine with leverage that might be sufficiently strong to bring a currently reluctant Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.

Nevertheless, such a circumstance remains in the realm of fantasy unless and until the U.S. and its allies fulfill most or all of Ukraine’s military needs.

As long as the West insists on providing Kyiv only with defensive weapons, the lives of both fighting forces and innocent civilians will continue to be lost, and the war will remain a stalemate with no clear end in sight.

Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.