According to Ukrainian negotiators who recently met with an American delegation, the Russia-Ukraine war must conclude with Crimea as the main goal.
According to Herman Pirchner Jr., president of the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC), “I think that Ukraine’s interest in Crimea is publicly stated, which talks less about the fact that you’ve had immigration from Russia to Crimea to up the percentage of Russian population than [how] some Ukrainians and Tartars who were native to Crimea have been driven out.”
He continued, “I think there’s a feeling…that Crimea is something that Ukrainian forces could capture.”
Pirchner and former Under-Secretary of State William Schneider Jr. co-led an eight-person delegation that traveled to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and the port city of Odesa, among other places, from January 20 to January 29.
The trip was planned without the assistance of the U.S. State Department and directly with Ukrainian counterparts.
The Americans took part in five or more meetings a day with senior Ukrainian government officials in the areas of infrastructure, energy, intelligence, and defense, as well as with politicians, ambassadors, and representatives of embassies, as well as with citizens and those who had been the victims of Russian aggression.
The topic of immediate concern in Kyiv is the treatment of Crimea’s Ukrainian population under Russian control, the AFPC noted, especially the fate of members of the Indigenous population of Crimean Tatars who have been continuously oppressed in the past.
“Russia is perceived by Tatar representatives in exile as wanting to eliminate the Crimean Tatars altogether in a process which began with the February 2014 annexation of Crimea,” according to the AFPC’s trip report. “We were told that just during the period of our visit, there had been Russian police raids on hundreds of Tatar homes in Crimea.”
It has reportedly led to countless young Tatars fleeing Crimea to places like Georgia and even Ireland.
