Crimea is still in limbo five years after Russia seized it

THE METALLIC likeness of Catherine the Great towers over a park in Simferopol, the capital of Crimea. First erected in 1890 to commemorate the centenary of Catherine’s capture of the peninsula, it was torn down after the Russian revolution. After the Soviet Union collapsed, leaving Crimea part of newly-independent Ukraine, attempts to rebuild the statue stalled. Only after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 did the empress’s countenance rise again. “She’s the Putin of the 18th century,” says Andrei Malgin, the director of a local history museum. A defiant message adorns the pedestal: “This monument has been rebuilt in honour of the reunification of Crimea with Russia in 2014 and FOR ALL TIME.”

Russia’s seizure of Crimea ruptured its relations with Ukraine and the West. Other crises followed: wars in eastern Ukraine and Syria, election interference in America. Ukraine still wants its territory back. Volodymyr Zelensky, the country’s new president, called it “Ukrainian land” in his inauguration speech. But Russia has the peninsula firmly under its control. Western officials pay lip service to territorial integrity, while resigning themselves to the new status quo.