[Bruce Campbells Chin]

Taking Crimea would be a very long and bloody fight that Ukraine may well not win. The Russians would fortify the isthmus of Perekop, less than 5 miles wide, and there’s no way to flank it. Ideal defensive positions.

[MeganC]

I don’t expect there will be much of a battle for Crimea. The Russians are going to end up leaving all on their own.

[Zhang Fei]

[Taking Crimea would be a very long and bloody fight that Ukraine may well not win. The Russians would fortify the isthmus of Perekop, less than 5 miles wide, and there’s no way to flank it. Ideal defensive positions.]

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Let’s say Ukraine takes back what it had prior to the Feb 24. That means Crimea is cut off from fresh water. That makes Crimea’s situation worse than Kherson’s. The Kerch bridge is mostly down and can probably be rendered completely out of commission with ATACMS. Ultimately, without resupply except by ferry, it’s basically a waiting game until Crimea runs out of supplies. It’s one thing to resupply Crimea for day-to-day civilian functionality by ferry. To do it for a large Russian force - hard to see how they keep up any rate of fire, given fuel and ammo resupply problems.

[BeauBo]

“Taking Crimea would be a very long and bloody fight that Ukraine may well not win. The Russians would fortify the isthmus of Perekop, less than 5 miles wide”

That is true. They had pre-existing defenses there, and have been digging more.

I guess it would be an extended (many month) siege of Crimea, rather than a frontal assault, with continued attrition from deep strike weapons like HIMARS, and lots of rear area attacks by Special Operations Forces, Partisans and drones.