What, according to Vladimir Putin, is Russia’s Temple Mount? The answer to this quiz question is: Crimea. It has “invaluable civilizational and even sacral importance for Russia”, Putin remarked in 2014, “like the Temple Mount in Jerusalem for the followers of Islam and Judaism”. Yet, for all its “spiritual” worth, it is the peninsula’s strategic value that is likely looming in the Russian President’s thinking these days.

On Friday, local authorities declared a state of emergency after weeks of sustained Ukrainian air strikes. Kyiv’s campaign to isolate Crimea has battered the area’s transport, military and energy infrastructure, leaving residents grappling with fuel shortages and rolling blackouts. Civilians have subsequently complained of a lack of government preparation.

Crimea’s strife is an embarrassment for the Kremlin, disrupting the start of tourist season and prompting inhabitants to flee from territory that Moscow has endeavored to portray as safe. The peninsula holds deep personal and political significance for Putin: he has argued that it “has always been an inseparable part of Russia” and that the 1954 transfer of territory to Ukraine constituted an injustice in need of correction.

The 2014 annexation sent his approval ratings soaring, fueled a wave of patriotic fervor, and was cast as the restoration of Russia’s great power status. It is the territorial acquisition most closely identified with the man himself and its loss would be a political as well as a military blow, puncturing one of the central claims to Putin’s legacy and “legitimacy”.

Crimea has also played a pivotal strategic role in the war, providing the base from which Russian forces launched their 2022 offensive into the south of Ukraine. Isolation operations, such as the one being carried out by Ukraine, often precede an attempt to seize the territory. Yet, in this instance, that seems improbable, with Kyiv likely lacking the resources for anything more than holding a small area, even if it did launch an amphibious assault.

Rather, these attacks form part of Ukraine’s plan aimed at pressuring Moscow to come to the negotiating table. With the Kremlin continuing to drag its feet, Ukraine’s Crimea campaign has reportedly taken Putin by surprise and shattered his illusions at a time when his generals were providing overly optimistic predictions for territorial gains in the Donbas. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also reveled in seeing Russia being forced to redeploy air defense systems to Moscow and Crimea “at the expense of weakening other sectors of their territory and the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine”.

Strikes offer further military advantages by disrupting Russian supply lines to occupied Ukraine. With Kyiv’s attacks sabotaging alternative logistics routes through Russian-held territory, Crimea — and the Kerch Bridge — has become an increasingly critical artery for supplying Moscow’s forces along the Dnipro. As Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has noted, “there is a direct correlation between how much we strike logistics and the number of assault operations taking place on the front line.”

Attacks have pushed out Moscow’s remaining Black Sea Fleet command and control units to Novorossiysk. Control over Crimea is key to disrupting supplies in and out of Odesa and cutting off access to the Sea of Azov. Kyiv seeks to isolate the peninsula entirely while systematically damaging critical infrastructure, thereby creating siege conditions for inhabitants. British intelligence assesses that the degradation of Russian air defenses has expanded Kyiv’s opportunities for attack. The bridge, a potent symbol of Crimea’s integration into Russia, has already been temporarily shut.

From Catherine the Great’s 1783 annexation to Putin’s over two centuries later, the peninsula is of such strategic importance that, according to former US Army Europe commander Ben Hodges, whichever side controls Crimea wins this war. Ukraine is demonstrating that while Russia may possess Crimea, this is not the same as controlling it. And for the Russians there? In the words of Fedorov, “hell is beginning.”

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Bethany Elliott is a writer specialising in Russia and Eastern Europe.

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