ODESA, Ukraine — Beneath a chill, low-lying fog, the Black Sea has gone winter-gray. The craggy coast of Crimea, illegally seized from Ukraine by Russia nearly nine years ago, lies far from this southern stretch of seashore — yet, to many here, the strategic peninsula suddenly seems tantalizingly close.
Ukraine's recapture this month of Kherson, a provincial capital to the north of Crimea, has revived longtime hopes of somehow regaining control of the Massachusetts-sized peninsula, which the government in Kyiv — and most of the world — still considers part of Ukraine.
Long-range weaponry that Ukraine does not possess would be crucial to such an effort, and Moscow has tried to make clear that attacks on its forces in Crimea, including the key warm-water port of Sevastopol, amount to crossing an explosive tripwire. Even so, the fate of the peninsula, home to 2.4 million people, is increasingly part of the wartime discourse.
