This is the best summary I could come up with:

Crimea remains the grand prize in Ukraine’s efforts to defeat Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country, the former commander of U.S. Army Europe has told Newsweek, as Kyiv’s troops continue a slow southward push that could prove pivotal in shaping the conclusion of a nine-year conflict thought to have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

“The ground part of this counteroffensive is obviously aimed at being able to sever, either by occupation or through fire, the so-called ‘land bridge,’” retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges said, referring to the swath of occupied southern Ukraine now connecting Crimea to western Russia.

Kyiv’s current operation is “a tale of two bridges,” Dan Rice, a former adviser to Ukrainian commander-in-chief General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, has previously told Newsweek.

Kyiv’s units are having to pick their way through expansive minefields under artillery fire, which President Volodymyr Zelensky has cited as one reason for the “slower than desired” pace of the operation.

Some Western officials have expressed concern over Kyiv’s repeatedly stated ambition to liberate Crimea, the seizure of which by Russian troops in 2014 touched off the ongoing hot phase of a Moscow-Kyiv conflict simmering for decades.

Earlier this year, former Russian President and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev—now largely sidelined within the Kremlin but also one of its most vocal hawks—said that any “serious offensives involving an attempt to retake Crimea” would “serve as a basis for the use of all means of protection, including those provided for by the basic doctrine of nuclear deterrence.”

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