With Ukraine’s summer offensive proceeding slower than hoped, plans for the liberation of Crimea may to some seem a little premature to the foreign observer.
This is not the case in Ukraine itself – almost one-in-two Ukrainians plans to visit and Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov promised that he will celebrate his next birthday in June 2024 on the liberated peninsula.
But the task ahead is huge – after the monumental military effort required to wrest back control of the territory illegally-annexed by Russia in 2014, Ukraine needs to restore governance to an area of land the same size as many small countries.
Then there are the questions it raises? What to do with any Russians who decide to stay? What about Ukrainians with Russian passports? What about collaborators? Does Ukraine demolish the Crimea Bridge or keep it standing?
Tamila Tasheva, permanent representative of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, explained to Kyiv Post how the authorities see the strategy of reintegration of the peninsula.
According to them, this plan has approved by a majority of Crimeans who managed to read the document despite persecution from Russia.
What’s the plan?
Ukraine began working up a plan for the liberation of Crimea long before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
The previous year, President Zelensky announced a decree titled: “On the Strategy of Deoccupation and Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol.”
This became a guide for the plan currently being put into effect but needed significant revisions as, in 2021, a diplomatic solution to Russia’s occupation of the peninsula was still the most likely scenario envisaged by Kyiv.
The full-scale invasion radically shifted this perspective and the new plan had to accommodate the new reality – Ukraine would have to take back Crimea by force.
The final version of Kyiv’s new action plan for the reintegration of the Crimean Peninsula will be presented on August 23.
“We understand that Crimea will be liberated in the near future,” Tasheva tells Kyiv Post.
“Accordingly, we need to be ready for this process.”
Permanent representative of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Tamila Tasheva. PHOTO: Ukrinform.
What will it address?
Crucially, the plan will not address how to liberate Crimea or issues of security – these are strictly the remits of Ukraine’s defense and law enforcement sectors, information on which is not public.
Instead, the plan will focus on the restoration of Ukrainian governance in Crimea.
Initially, military administrations will carry out this work and then, when martial law in Ukraine is ended, these will become military-civilian administrations.
“We are working on the priority steps needed after deoccupation, that is, after the liberation of the territory,” Tasheva says.
“These are actually reintegration steps.”
How big is the task?
Absolutely huge and the government has already started recruiting for the task – according to estimates, 50,000 civil servants will be required to establish governance across all the areas required to run the peninsula.
According to Tasheva, 1,000 applications for positions have already been received.
“These are people who are already active civil servants who have work experience as well as others who have absolutely no public service experience at all,” she said.
What are the first steps?
One of the first tasks will be to decide the fate of infrastructure built by or taken over by Russia since Moscow illegally invaded in 2014, much of it military installations.
Some of it could be kept and utilized by Ukraine, most notably the naval infrastructure that currently maintains Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
Ukraine’s navy – which currently consists only of handful of small boats – is in dire need of rebuilding, a need that will only increase post-liberation. But as this is a military matter, it won’t be covered in the upcoming plan.
“The armed forces of Ukraine will independently decide on the future of Russia military infrastructure in Crimea,” Tasheva says.
In a hugely symbolic move, the Crimea Bridge – Putin’s $3.7 billion flagship infrastructure project linking Crime with the Russian mainland – will be demolished.
Ukraine will also conduct an inventory of state and communal property and determine the damage caused by the Russian occupation.
It will also be necessary to determine the future fate of buildings erected by residents of the Russian Federation or the occupation authorities.
During this stabilization phase, elections will not be held.
Under Ukrainian plans, the Crimea Bridge will be demolished. PHOTO: AFP
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