Crimea A decade of occupation dims hopes of territory ever being recaptured

Ten years of the Crimean Spring," say billboards around the Crimean peninsula. "It all started with us." The Russian presidential election, to be held over three days at the end of this week, coincides with the 10-year anniversary of Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014. The swift seizure of the peninsula in March that year, Vladimir Putin's response to the Maidan Revolution in Kyiv, was indeed the beginning of 10 years of military action against Ukraine.

- Shaun Walker, Pjotr Sauer

At the time, although almost no other countries recognised the annexation as legitimate, most people believed Russian rule was likely to remain in Crimea for decades. Since the start of Russia's full-scale war on Ukraine, however, the situation has become increasingly unpredictable.

The stalling of Ukraine's counteroffensive makes it highly unlikely that Kyiv could take back Crimea militarily, and the brief period of optimism in late 2022 when top officials described the return of Crimea as "inevitable" has long dissipated. But the two years of war have exposed Russian dominance of the peninsula as vulnerable for the first time since 2014.

The Ukraine-based Black Sea Institute for Strategic Studies found that Ukrainian armed forces launched 184 strikes against targets in Crimea in 2023, frequently using drones to attack military targets on land and naval vessels off its coast. "These are all preparatory moves before a serious operation in Crimea," Ukraine's military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said this week.

Amid the shaky security situation, Russia's crackdown on dissent in Crimea, which has been ruthless ever since 2014, has risen to a new level. Since the beginning of the full-scale war, Crimea is second only to Moscow, among Russian regions, when it comes to the number of court cases opened against citizens for "discrediting the Russian army", a broadly interpreted charge that can include posting pro-Ukrainian content on social media.

An active player in the battle to subdue dissent in the peninsula is Crimean Smersh, a Telegram account named after a second world war counterintelligence body whose name was derived from the Russian phrase "Death to Spies".