Do you believe letting Russia have Crimea is appropriate in a future peace deal?

[DavidB.]

In the ideal world, Crimea would return to Ukraine and all the illegal Russian colonizers would voluntarily f**k off to Russia across the bridge, and after they have left, the bridge is blown up for good.

In the real world, Crimea will probably be given up if it ever comes to negotiations. It's just too strategically important for Russia and I don't see Ukraine having the military capacity to take it over by force. Is that "appropriate"? Purely based on Ukrainian sovereignty, no. But is it appropriate to accept a reality in which the war is prolonged and many young Ukrainian men get killed while fighting purely for Crimea? Perhaps I'd also say no. At some point you need to make difficult, imperfect decisions, because all solutions are bad. Ultimately this is up to the Ukrainians, though, and I'm happy I don't have to make this call.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

It will almost certainly be on the table in any post-Putin negotiations, due to the rest of the world allowing it to become a done deal in 2014.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Realistically it will probably come to that in the end, but it shouldn't be made too easy for Russia to get it - both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.

Putin needs to pay a high price for it, so that any Russian victory is a pyrrhic victory.

[Lord Halifax]

In theory, I want Ukraine to keep the Crimean peninsula.

In reality, Ukraine having to take in 2 million ethnic Russians and/or Russian speakers which have been living under Russian rule for almost a decade now and have been in the Russian-language information space long enough to have pro-Russian narratives entrenched into their society would be a serious problem for Ukraine that would never be solved and could possibly make Ukraine subject to a frozen conflict over a territorial dispute regarding Crimea. This would hamper Ukraine's other ambitions like joining the EU or NATO, so I would suggest it is wiser to let Russia have the Crimean peninsula.

there is no reason to assume all of the Russians would stay if Crimea came under Ukrainian control again, and those who have settled illegally after 2014 should of course be expelled.

Crimea was majority ethnic Russian and almost entirely Russian speaking (and relatively sympathetic to Moscow, compared to the rest of Ukraine) prior to 2014. Most of the people who were brainwashed into joining Russia in 2014 were those already living there prior to the war (even though the restrictive and propagandistic nature of the Russian information space had an effect+the 2014 referendum was rigged). 600,000 Russian citizens have moved in since 2014, which is only a third of Crimea's population.
https://kyivindependent.com/security-council-chief-russia-moved-600000-people-to-crimea-since-occupation/


When the conflict began in 2014, Eastern/Southern Ukraine including Crimea were linguistically and ideologically much closer to Russia than they are today. In the meantime, since Crimea has been under Russian control since 2014, Russia has become more hyper-nationalistic and isolated from the rest of the world and Ukraine has also become more protective of its own nationalism and separated itself from Russia. For many reasons, making Crimea live under Ukrainian rule after living under Russian rule for nearly a decade would just cause too many problems for Ukraine, unfortunately.

but the point is that a Ukrainian conquest of Crimea would unleash a massive refugee wave from Crimea to Russia so there simply wouldn't be that many civilians left, and the savage nature of the war means very few people will want to live on the "wrong" side of the border afterwards.