Ukraine Has No Opportunity to Reclaim Crimea, Pentagon Says

Ukrainian forces are unlikely to be able to retake Crimea from Russia in the near future. This was stated by four senior officials of the Pentagon during a confidential briefing to lawmakers from the U.S. House Armed Services Committee.

The Pentagon does not believe that Ukraine has, or will soon have, the capability to force Russian troops to withdraw from the Crimean Peninsula, which was annexed by the Russian Federation in 2014, according to sources reported by Politico.

The sources requested anonymity to discuss details of the confidential briefing. “We’re not going to comment on classified briefings; we’re not going to speculate or make assumptions about potential future actions,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh stated regarding the information leak.

Politico adds that the issue of Crimea’s reclamation has been contentious for months, as American and European officials insist that the peninsula is legally part of Ukraine, while Kyiv is correspondingly not being supplied with the arms necessary to reclaim the territory.