Any just and lasting peace agreement to the Ukraine conflict must account for a Crimea free of Russian occupation for the sake of regional peace and security. Crimea, under Putin’s control, would likely turn the Black Sea into a Russian lake, severing the Caucasus and Central Asia from Europe and directly threatening NATO members Romania and Bulgaria and effectively precluding Baltic-Black Seas connectivity. 

A Russian Crimea mortally endangers Odesa and Ukraine’s entire southern coast, sowing the seeds for an enduring simmering Ukraine-Russia conflict fueled by concerns over national security, sovereignty, and pride. Russian control would return Crimea to its centuries-old violent history: a flashpoint of regional instability and power competition among all interested in accessing the Black Sea. Furthermore, Russian dominance in the area would significantly boost Chinese and Iranian influence across the Black and Caspian Seas and greater Central Asia more broadly, undermining American, European, and broader free-world interests.

Putin is a puppeteer who is quickly running out of puppets, strings, and stage space. His war economy is fueling unsustainable inflation at home and is unable to replace men and material on the battlefield. According to a recent article in Foreign Policy, Russia is producing twenty artillery and tank cannons a month to replace over 300 lost over the same period. The Russian army is losing over 40,000 soldiers per month and recruiting around 20,000–30,000 around the same period despite lucrative bonuses. As a result, North Korean soldiers are fighting in Kursk, and hapless migrant workers find themselves shanghaied to the frontlines. 

According to present indicators, Ukraine can hold out longer with stronger allied support than Russia can. Putin’s hope could be that American support for Ukraine dries up so Russia can consolidate its battleground gains under the guise of a ceasefire or peace agreement. Consequently, Putin is throwing the kitchen sink at Ukraine in anticipation of a ceasefire on existing lines soon after President Trump is sworn in. Any acknowledgment of a Russian Crimea as part of a (temporary) peace deal would be a big win for Putin and a greater loss for the United States, Europe, and the wider region. 

The Crimean Peninsula, located at the northern center of the Black Sea, dominates the region’s geography—hence Putin’s unlawful seizure in 2014. With Crimea, Russia effectively controls the northern half of the Black Sea, from Georgia to Romania. This strategic advantage allows Russia to reassert dominance across the region, consolidating its influence in Moldova, Georgia, and the Caucasus, strangling Ukraine’s maritime access and threatening Romania’s critical Danube transportation corridor stretching to southern Germany and connecting through the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal to northwest Europe. 

Romania, in partnership with American industry, is poised to develop its significant offshore natural gas fields. By 2027, Romania is projected to become Europe’s largest natural gas producer. Bulgaria and Turkey are also progressing with their offshore gas developments. All of these projects face serious jeopardy if Crimea is officially handed to Putin.

A Russian Crimea jeopardizes European energy independence, threatening not only Black Sea energy development and transit pipelines from the Caucasus and Central Asia but also the connectivity of the Baltic and Black Seas. The Three Seas Initiative, championed by thirteen eastern European nations and President Trump, calls for improved digital, energy, and transport connectivity between the Adriatic, Baltic, and Black Seas. The initiative’s robust implementation holds the key to the economic prosperity and resilience of Eastern Europe, NATO mobility readiness, and Ukraine’s integration into Europe. A Russian stranglehold on the Black Sea from Crimea presents an insurmountable barrier to the fulfillment of the Three Seas Initiative. 

Russian dominance over Crimea also jeopardizes transatlantic initiatives to establish digital and physical infrastructure connecting Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia through the Black and Caspian Seas. The EU’s subsea fiber-optic and energy cables across the Black Sea would be vulnerable to industrial sabotage, similar to the threats in the Baltic Sea.

From its Crimean stronghold, Putin can veto any economic activities across the Black Sea (like the Middle Corridor) that contradict Russian interests. This de facto blockade would suffocate Ukraine’s maritime economy and slowly strangle Odesa. It would exponentially heighten pressure on Moldova with the possibility of a reinvigorated Russian presence in Transnistria and fulfill Russia’s goal to turn the republic into a vassal state.

A Crimea under Russian control poses a grave threat to Romania, the United States’ closest Black Sea ally and NATO member. Accepting Putin’s annexation would enable further territorial aggression, following the pattern of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 and 2022. With Crimea secured, Putin would likely push across the Dnipro River toward Odesa, energizing Russian-backed forces in Transnistria and prompting calls from Moldova’s Gagauz minority for Russian intervention. The Russian playbook of fabricated “patriotic” interventions, seen in Donbas and elsewhere, would likely be repeated in Moldova, bringing Russian troops to Romania’s border. This would make Romania’s 420-mile frontier the second-longest NATO-Russia border after Finland.

The strategically vital Snake Island at the mouth of the Danube Delta would also be endangered. Although Ukrainian resistance has thus far kept Russian naval forces at bay, a hasty peace would reopen the path for a renewed Russian effort to seize the island. This would allow Russia to choke the Danube River gateway, the second-largest maritime route into the Black Sea after the Dardanelles. This would effectively blockade Ukraine, Moldova, and much of Romania, provoking sustained harassment and instability in the region. Currently, 4,500 U.S. troops are stationed at the Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base, only 100 miles from Snake Island.

Turkey, the dominant Black Sea power, stands to lose the most if the sea becomes a Russian lake. Unfortunately, despite its public support for Ukraine in solidarity with Crimean Tatars, Ankara has been complicit in Russia’s creeping dominance by insisting on a rigid interpretation of the Montreux Convention, which restricts NATO’s naval presence in the Black Sea. As a NATO member, Turkey must recognize that Russian hegemony poses a far greater threat than NATO presence in the region.

Any peace agreement that leaves Crimea under Russian control would be a victory for Putin’s expansionist ambitions to reconstitute the Russian imperial sphere of influence. History suggests such an agreement would only lead to bloodier and more expansive conflicts in the near future, substantially increasing the likelihood of direct NATO involvement.

For the United States, allowing a peace deal that leaves Crimea with Putin would constitute a strategic blunder comparable to the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. History might judge such an agreement alongside the infamous Munich Pact of 1938, which attempted to appease Hitler by ceding Sudetenland, with disastrous consequences. Munich defined and tarnished British prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s legacy for appeasing Hitler. History will be equally unkind to those who appease Putin.

President-elect Trump, by many accounts, is more akin to Churchill than Chamberlain. He should reject any short-sighted peace deal that leaves Crimea in Russian hands and instead make a free Crimea central to a just and lasting peace. With his focus on business and infrastructure and making America great again, Trump could leverage a free Crimea to transform the region into a future of peace and prosperity backed by American industry and ingenuity. Like President Harry Truman and General George Marshall before him, Trump could leave a legacy of reshaping Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Those who underestimate him—and the potential for such a vision—do so at their peril.

Kaush Arha is president of the Free & Open Indo-Pacific Forum and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue.

George Scutaru is the CEO of the New Strategy Center and a former national security advisor to the President of Romania.

Justina Budginaite-Froehly is a security and defense policy expert focusing on defense industrial developments, military mobility, and energy security in Europe.

Image: NickolayV / Shutterstock.com.