Russia’s “increasing militarization” of territory seized from Ukraine in 2014 poses a threat to Western allies, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned while acknowledging the sixth anniversary of when Russia captured Crimea.
“The United States does not and will not ever recognize Russia’s claims of sovereignty over the peninsula,” Pompeo said on Wednesday evening. “Russia’s occupation of Crimea and its increasing militarization of the peninsula is a threat to our common security.”
That statement will be welcomed in Kyiv, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been troubled by a perceived diminution of Western interest in a crisis that began when unmarked Russian special forces poured across the border to seize the strategically valuable Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Zelensky hopes to strike a major peace agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but U.S. and Ukrainian officials are pledging that the deal won’t involve territorial concessions.
“Six years on, Russia continues to rely on lies and disinformation in its failed attempt to legitimize the illegitimate,” Pompeo said. “Its efforts are doomed to failure. The world will never forget Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.”
Those remarks echo Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s 2017 prediction that NATO is “doomed to failure,” an assertion that he paired with a rare acknowledgment that Russia had in fact sent military forces into Ukraine. Those troops were deployed in unmarked uniforms, as Putin maintains that the war is an intra-Ukrainian conflict between ethnic Russian citizens of the country and an allegedly oppressive Ukrainian central government.
“It shows a strong will to hold the ground,” a Baltic official pleased by Pompeo’s statement told the Washington Examiner. “It is important to stay committed to Ukraine’s territorial integrity and be vocal on that.”
Zelensky, who rebuked Putin last week for viewing Ukraine as a tool for Moscow’s “geopolitical ambitions,” emphasized that he won’t strike a grand bargain that concedes Crimea to Russia in exchange for peace in eastern Ukraine.
“We are doing everything to stop the war in the Donbass,” Zelensky said Wednesday. “But it doesn’t mean that Crimea is removed from the agenda and may become the price for peace in the Donbass.”
Some Western leaders hope to improve relations with Russia despite Putin’s refusal to change course.
“Isn’t it a little early for everyone to be settling down?” Zelensky said earlier this month at the Munich Security Conference. “This is a war in Europe. And it has been going on, along with the annexation of Crimea, for as long as the Second World War.”
Some Western analysts believe that Crimea is gone for good, but Pompeo’s endorsement of Zelensky’s demand for the return of the peninsula has practical value, according to the Baltic official.
“There is no forceful solution here, and frankly speaking, no solution visible in the nearest future, but nevertheless … holding the ground prevents further escalation,” the official said.
