Trump Can’t Recognize Russia’s Crimea Grab
There are strong legal obstacles to such a move, so the president will need other bargaining chips for Putin.
“Crimea Russia”
Photographer: Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesPresident Donald Trump has left it unclear whether he might recognize Crimea as part of Russia. But can he actually do it? That’s not a trivial question.
Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton and his press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders have said that the U.S. doesn’t recognize the 2014 annexation of the Black Sea peninsula that had been part of Ukrainian territory since 1954. But the president himself would only say, “We’re going to have to see.” Coupled with a report, which Trump has never denied, that he told G-7 heads of state recently that Crimea was Russian because everybody there spoke Russian, that leaves the matter open. Or, rather, it’s open to the extent that a U.S. president has the power to extend recognition to an act of anschluss.