Opinion: Is Trump Serious About Exchanging Crimea for Peace Deal? (2025)

According to a Sunday report in The Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration is proposing a so-called “peace deal” – freezing the war in exchange for recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Ukraine is expected to respond to the US proposal this week, which, according to some Washington officials, could lead to an end to the war.

The WSJ also reports that the discussions include Ukraine’s potential NATO membership and the area surrounding the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in the city of Enerhodar.

As talks between Ukraine and the US are set to resume in London, it is difficult to fathom why so many are quick to dismiss Ukraine’s legitimate territorial claim to the Crimean Peninsula particularly in light of the suffering its residents have suffered under the occupation regime.

The position of Trump’s administration to wards Crimea

US President Donald Trump regularly bounces off a Kremlin wall, as his administration is beginning to realize that freezing the conflict – or as they prefer to call it, a peace deal – is not so simple. The period preceding the violated Easter ceasefire may not have been marked by attacks on energy infrastructure, but it was witness to the shelling of civilian areas in Ukrainian cities.

Marco Rubio [who may not now attend] along with Steve Witkoff, and Keith Kellogg are expected to participate in Wednesday’s meeting in London. It seems likely that they will raise the potential recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea as part of a proposed US peace deal in front of the Ukrainian and European delegations.

Will this suggestion fall on fertile ground with Western public opinion? Many are surprisingly receptive and lenient toward Russia’s claims over Crimea. It certainly has the potential of being a more “flexible” issue than Moscow’s claims on the other Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine.

This is extremely dangerous: Trump’s acceptance of Moscow’s undermining of the international order could not only reduce America’s global prestige but also open a political Pandora’s box.

A US president who, in the past, has himself voiced territorial claims over Canada and Greenland could – by recognizing Crimea as part of the Russian Federation – create a precedent and open the gates for hypothetical territorial claims by other countries: for instance, Germany toward the Polish city of Szczecin, or Hungary and Romania toward parts of Ukraine. While such scenarios seem unthinkable today, Trump could open the flood gates for these and other spurious demands.

Even Radosław Sikorski, Poland’s Foreign Minister – someone who could hardly be accused of pro-Russian sympathies – wrote with a certain understanding of Russian claims to Crimea in his 2018 book, “Polska może być lepsza. Kulisy polskiej dyplomacji” [Poland Can Be Better – Behind the Scenes of Polish Diplomacy”]:

“[Ukraine] is a multiethnic and relatively large state. Of course, this is thanks to Soviet policy. Its current shape (or rather the shape before the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas) is in fact the result of an attempt to win over Ukrainian elites in exchange for transferring to Ukraine lands whose ‘Ukraine-ness’ was somewhat overstated.”

Sikorski’s stance was and remains unequivocally pro-Ukrainian. So where do such nuanced observations come from?

A number of myths and legends have grown up around the “gift” of Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR by the USSR in 1954. The truth is fairly straightforward: Khrushchev’s political decision was meant to simplify logistics – Crimea was more closely linked to Ukraine geographically, and its population was multiethnic: it was home to Tatars, Krymchaks, Karaites, and Ukrainians.

Many more ethnic and national groups had ties to Crimea – often as a result of imperial policies, both under the Tsars and Bolshevik Russia. However, linking the peninsula to Russian culture is a stretch – as evidenced by the results of the 1991 referendum following the dissolution of the Soviet Union: despite heavy Russification, over 54% of Crimea’s residents voted in favor of joining Ukraine.

That doesn’t mean the rest were pro-Russian – Crimea had its own autonomy, its own parliament, and a local identity. For years, Crimea was considered disloyal to Moscow. Russia’s claims are nothing more than an imperial fantasy harbored by the current and previous regimes, who had been trying to colonize Crimea as far back the late 18th century.

The residents of Crimea are political prisoners of Russia.

Since the beginning of the 2014 Russian occupation, many residents of Crimea have ended up in Russian prisons. The charges brought against them are often absurd and purely political. Their main “crime” was loyalty to Ukraine.

As the occupying power, Russia carries out a policy of repression against various minorities in numerous ways – including against the Crimean Tatars – who are persecuted both on religious and ethnic grounds as an indigenous people of Ukraine. Out of 228 documented political prisoners from Crimea, 134 are Crimean Tatars. The occupying authorities are also deporting Ukrainian children, relocating populations, and destroying the natural environment.

Kyiv Post had the opportunity to attend a meeting with the families of political prisoners, held at the Mission of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, located in Kyiv. Each of the stories shared there stands as testimony to how the occupying authorities treat the local population.

Hennadiy Afanasyev

Olga, Hennadiy’s shared his story. After participating as an activist in the 2014 protests, he was arrested by the FSB. After a coerced confession obtained through torture, he was put on trial in 2016, a hearing that was widely broadcast by Russia’s media propaganda. Thanks to the tireless efforts of human rights activists and his mother, he was eventually freed later that year as part of a prisoner exchange. But there was no happy ending. Hennadiy joined the defense of Ukraine following the full-scale invasion in 2022. He was killed in action defending his homeland on December 18, 2022, near Luhansk.

Oksana Senedzhuk

Maria shared the story of her mother, Oksana, who was actively involved during the Orange Revolution and the Revolution of Dignity. She was arrested in Crimea and sentenced to 15 years in prison for espionage. The accusation? Sending photos of the Russian Black Sea Fleet to Ukrainian intelligence. In reality, Oksana simply had a sea view from her home and would occasionally take photos of the scenery with her phone. The Russian authorities based their charges on… pictures of the sea.

Kurtamet Appaz

This Crimean Tatar, born in 2002, is one of Crimea’s youngest political prisoners. He was arrested in 2022 and sentenced to 7 years in prison under Article 208, Part 1 of the Russian Criminal Code – “Creation of an armed formation not provided for by federal law, as well as leadership of such a formation or its financing”. Sounds serious, doesn’t it? His “crime” was making a Hr. 500 ($12) donation to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Securing the release of prisoners

From time to time, prisoner exchanges do occur. However, it has been far easier to secure the release of POWs than of civilians. A captured soldier can be exchanged for another soldier from the opposing side. But who can civilians be exchanged for? Ukraine does not take civilian hostages. If an exchange were to involve a soldier in return for a civilian, it could potentially lead to increased Russian repression against Ukrainian civilians.

Discussions meant to lead to a ceasefire in Russia’s more than three-year war on Ukraine are ongoing with limited results. Many of the statements made publicly by politicians often reinforced by leaks to the media are not actual proposals but rather statements of negotiating positions.

If the Trump Administration does go ahead with a decision to recognize occupied Crimea as part of the Russian Federation, they would be legitimizing the terrible fate of the people described above, condemning them to further purgatory along with the hundreds of others who have suffered under Russian repression.

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.