President Trump has spoken a great deal on negotiating an end to the Russo-Ukraine War, but there are, as always in these matters, complications. Both sides have made noises about a negotiated peace, but both sides have areas that they are not willing to budge on.
One of those areas is Crimea. Crimea, which includes the now-Russian warm-water Black Sea port of Sevastopol, as well as the reactivated Soviet-era submarine port at Balaklava, were seized by Russia during the presidency of Barack Obama in 2014. Russia is not willing to give up that territory and that port, and Ukraine's leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, is now saying Ukraine will never recognize Crimea as Russian territory. There's a problem: There's not much he can do about it.
This led to a blast of pixels from President Trump.
— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) April 23, 2025
The post continues:
The statement made by Zelenskyy today will do nothing but prolong the “killing field,” and nobody wants that! We are very close to a Deal, but the man with “no cards to play” should now, finally, GET IT DONE. I look forward to being able to help Ukraine, and Russia, get out of this Complete and Total MESS, that would have never started if I were President!
While the president is clearly in a bit of a temper over this, he makes a good point: Crimea's a done deal. Volodymyr Zelensky doesn't have to like it, but it looks like he's going to have to take the "L" on this one.
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It's not as though Crimea hasn't been handed back and forth through the centuries. It was Mongol territory from 1238 to 1783 - yes, when the United States was still a 13-state startup, Mongols still ruled Crimea. It was part of the Russian Empire from 1783 to 1917, then after the Russian Civil War, it was part of the Soviet Union from 1921 to 1991, when it became a part of Ukraine, only to be seized back by Russia in 2014. Ukraine, at that time, did not offer any military resistance to the Russian occupation.
Right or wrong, and there's plenty of wrong to go around in this affair, there doesn't appear to be any scenario in which Ukraine gets Crimea back. Tsar Vladimir I won't give it up, and Ukraine can't take it back by force. If there is to be any negotiated peace in this deal, it looks like Crimea is off the table. President Zelensky can refuse to legally recognize that until he's blue in the face, and it's not going to change a thing.
There's an argument to be made for Russia, as a condition of a peace agreement, withdrawing all forces from the parts of Ukraine it still holds. This thing has dragged on into what looks a lot like a high-tech version of the Great War, with both sides dug in and hurling ordnance back and forth. President Trump is right about that; this thing has gone on long enough. Enough people have died, enough people have been maimed, and enough cities and towns have been wrecked.
Zelensky's making Crimea an issue after all this time isn't doing Ukraine any good. He should let this one go.
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