Ukraine's defense minister certain Crimea will be returned without a fight – The Atlantic

Ukraine will return Crimea temporarily occupied by Russia without a fight, Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov believes, according to an article by The Atlantic entitled "The Counteroffensive".

"Once they have cut off the roads, railroads, and waterways to the peninsula, and targeted the military infrastructure with drones, the presumption is that many Russian inhabitants, especially recent immigrants, will become convinced that they would be better off living somewhere else," the Atlantic writes, adding that some the Russians had already fled after the explosion on the Crimean bridge and other explosions on the peninsula.

"Crimea we will take without a fight," Reznikov allegedly told the outlet.

At the same time, the authors note that there are detailed plans for the de-occupation of Crimea. The representative of the president in Crimea, Tamila Tasheva, is working with a group of experts on a strategy for the reconstruction of the peninsula that was annexed by Russia back in 2014.

Ukraine's spy chief Kyrylo Budanov previously asserted that Ukraine will return the temporarily occupied Crimea through a combination of military force and diplomacy.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba stated that a diplomatic solution to the war could be a return to Ukraine's borders as of 2013.