‘There Was a Whole Appeasement Psychology for a Long Time’

Returning the peninsula of Crimea to the control of the Ukrainian government is a high priority of the Ukrainian government. It is not quite as high a priority to the U.S. government. Forcing the Russian military forces back to the pre-February 2022 border lines would represent a huge achievement and represents a daunting challenge at the moment. Reversing the consequences of a bad decision from 2014 is another challenge for another day.

Russia annexed Crimea nine years ago, and the Obama administration, with Joe Biden as vice president, chose to denounce the Russian occupation and enact sanctions that no reasonable foreign-policy analyst could believe would spur Vladimir Putin to reverse his decision and concede the occupied territory.

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Jim Geraghty

Jim Geraghty is the senior political correspondent of National Review.

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Returning the peninsula of Crimea to the control of the Ukrainian government is a high priority of the Ukrainian government. It is not quite as high a priority to the U.S. government. Forcing the Russian military forces back to the pre-February 2022 border lines would represent a huge achievement and represents a daunting challenge at the moment. Reversing the consequences of a bad decision from 2014 is another challenge for another day.

Russia annexed Crimea nine years ago, and the Obama administration, with Joe Biden as vice president, chose to denounce the Russian occupation and enact sanctions that no reasonable foreign-policy analyst could believe would spur Vladimir Putin to reverse his decision and concede the occupied territory.