If Ukraine does not receive the necessary weapons, destruction in Crimea is possible, as in Donbas.

Crimea will be liberated this year regardless of whether Ukraine gets long-range missiles and planes or not.

In the second case, the operation to liberate the peninsula will last up to six months. This opinion was voiced by military expert Roman Svitan in an interview with .

According to Svitan, “We will definitely de-occupy Crimea this year,” and there are two scenarios, both of which end with the liberation of the peninsula.

“The first – we will be given long-range means of defeat of the ATACMS type after reaching the Azov coast (this is also already clear to everyone in principle and has happened, we can say). Since the front is 100 kilometers thick, you just need a certain amount of equipment to go through it and dissect it ” the bowels of the Russian front, the “Zaporizhia front” of the so-called A further from the Azov coast, if we are given long-range means of defeat of the ATACMS type (this can be, by the way, aviation with high-precision bombs, not only rockets), within a month, either missiles or bombs with aviation destroys 150-70 military facilities in Crimea, it is very easy to do, by the way. The Russians will not be able to cover Crimea with anything. Raisins, in Kherson. They have prepared here, they will go,” Svitan said.

According to the expert, if the necessary military equipment and ammunition are not provided, the operation will be delayed for months, but Crimea will still be liberated.

“If we don’t have aviation or long-range means of defeat, then we will enter Crimea head-on. This is also a small problem. Then the Russian group will be squeezed between two seas – the Black and Azov seas, and will have to squeeze out, mess around longer. … Then the destruction will be the same. as now in Donbas, but it will take up to six months to negotiate. That’s why we will definitely be in Crimea during this year,” he is confident.

Deoccupation of Crimea

Seizing the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014, the Russians turned it into a military base. The Russian military transferred here took part in the offensive in southern Ukraine, which began in 2022.

After the start of a full-scale war against Ukraine, the Russians captured Melitopol, Mariupol and other large cities of the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions, thus cutting off the land corridor to Crimea, which was previously only connected by the Crimean Bridge.

Now the enemy is making every effort to preserve the land corridor to Crimea. As Ukrainian intelligence reported, Russia is redeploying new military units to the north of Crimea to maintain the occupied territories.

Ukraine is not going to make territorial concessions and wants to reach the borders of 1991, liberating Crimea and the captured areas of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions. According to the head of military intelligence, Kyril Budanov, Ukraine will return Crimea by a combined means – both force and diplomacy. He also stressed that Ukraine “must do everything so that Crimea returns home by the summer.”