Thread by @michaeldweiss

I've been emphasizing lately the unintended consequences of Trump's headlong embrace of Russia -- consequences not wholly undesirable for Russia. While it's wonderful for Moscow to see an American president so eager to realign with Russia's strategic interests, and so keen to denigrate and alienate American allies in that re-alignment, smarter figures in the Kremlin realize the hazards of such an embarrassment of riches. A helpful constant in this administration's rush to give Putin everything all at once is that the worst capitulationist ideas are being stress-tested in the media and in the GOP almost as soon as they're invented -- and often *before* the Trump administration has agreed on whether or not they're feasible. One of ideas these is that the U.S. will recognize Crimea as Russian territory.

As you might expect, this was Steve Witkoff's proposal, which is to say it was Vladimir Putin's. Dim Philby isn't so much an envoy as an unblinking relay of Putin's maximalist demands, all of which he presents to Trump as eminently reasonable, if not accomplished facts. (Recall Witkoff's lie that Russia was in full control of the Ukrainian regions it "annexed," regions Witkoff doesn't know the names of, when it is in full control of none of them.) The "Krym Nash" brain fart, I'm told, happened without any inter-agency coordination or buy-in from the principals, least of all Marco Rubio, who is at odds with Witkoff on this and on much else, regardless of the flattering tweets he is obliged to post about his scandalous colleague. Now notice this little nuance in the WSJ story cited above:

"Senior State Department official," indeed. You can almost hear the whirr of the backpedal in that paragraph. Giving up Crimea in a de facto or de jure capacity is a non-starter for Ukraine, as any junior State Department official can tell you. Zelensky could never sell it domestically even if he wanted to (and he doesn't) because the the political blowback would be severe and almost certainly unite opposition to both the policy and his presidency in a way that would make the resistance he experienced over the Steinmeier Formula look coy. (This might even result in a far more nationalistic and hawkish political figure to emerge as frontrunner for the Ukrainian presidency; exactly the opposite of what the Putin-Vance-Carlson triumvirate has been angling for.)

Furthermore, the failed 2023 counteroffensive, meant to sever Russia's direct line of communication from occupied Donbas to Crimea, was largely about isolating Crimea for future recapture. Crimea is more strategically valuable to Ukraine; it is also seen as "easier" to liberate than Donbas, as Budanov has stated. For this reason, quite a lot of Ukrainian soldiers gave their lives in 2023 trying to break through to the Sea of Azov in service of this long-term objective. (Budanov himself was wounded during a special operations raid in the peninsula before the full-scale invasion; his bravery in that op is one of the reasons he became head of HUR.) So what of these sacrifices if Kyiv forfeits Crimea, especially absent something permanent, concrete and real to show for it such as NATO membership, which the Trump administration is also reportedly ruling out in peace talks? (Biden all but ruled that out, too, at the nadir of U.S.-Russian relations and it still wasn't good enough for Putin to offer any concessions.)

Europeans get a say here too as they will on any final settlement, however much that upsets the isolationists in the White House. There are EU sanctions in place over Russia's 2014 seizure of Crimea and the European Commission, which votes by consensus on sanctions, will not lift them. The takeover of Crimea, waged on the pretext of protecting ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers, also has ominous resonances for the continent: this was the first Anschluss on European soil since WW2 and it isn't so easily certified because a shady developer from the Bronx thinks it's fair bargain.

Finally, handing Crimea to Putin also runs into some significant legal and political obstacles in the United States. U.S. recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea (and other occupied territories of Ukraine) is prohibited by a series of laws and executive orders, including ones issued by Trump in his firs term. Some of these provisions are pegged to sanctions against FSB and GRU operatives, oligarchs and Russian officials who were involved in the 2014 seizure of the peninsula. See, for instance, E.O. 13660 and 13685. Many of these provisions were further codified by the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), designed in no small way to tie Trump's hands with respect to Russia sanctions during his first term. He nonetheless signed this act into law in 2017, quite possibly because he didn't understand it and it was too complicated to pictorialize with a Sharpie. Waiving CAATSA sanctions requires a Congressional vote.

Many of the points I've made above are now being made by Hill staffers to members of the press and to Trump administration officials who may be unaware of the implications of what would be a massive reversal in a decade-old U.S. policy. While this may not put the kibosh on the Crimea sell-out, it certainly complicates it in a way that might have been avoided if the pro-Russian camp in the U.S. government didn't try to do so much so quickly with big, goofy smiles on their faces. My guess is Witkoff faces stronger internal opposition for his ongoing Iran diplomacy, which is so far shaping up to be the preliminaries of JCPOA 2.0. (Dark nights of soul at AIPAC and FDD right about now.) But continually overpromising and under-delivering on Ukraine has its downside, too. Namely, the Russians get frustrated and impatient at their own agent of influence's inability to close, and that means their man in the White House gets frustrated and impatient. Before you know it, he's threatening to "wash his hands" of the whole affair.