Crimea was lost. Now Ukraine’s making a play to take it back.
➡️ Protect your privacy on the network level with Cape at https://cape.co/maxfisher. Use code MAXFISHER33 at checkout for 33% off your first 6 months.
Twelve years ago, Russia shocked the world by seizing Crimea from Ukraine. Now, against all odds, Ukraine is making a massive play to take it back, and it’s going better than anyone imagined – here’s how they’re pulling it off.
This video would not have been possible without reporting by Reuters, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Kyiv Independent, and the Institute for the Study of War.
Join Newpress, our community-driven hub for creator journalism: https://newpress.com/welcome
Welcome to The Bigger Picture, a new show that that makes sense of important news through clear visual explanations and analysis.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don’t miss any videos: https://www.youtube.com/@UCqPTW4CeoAgq111DA__mP9g
CHECK OUT OUR OTHER CHANNELS:
Johnny Harris: https://www.youtube.com/@johnnyharris
Search Party with Sam Ellis: https://www.youtube.com/@SearchParty
Tunnel Vision with Christophe Haubursin: https://www.youtube.com/@christophe
Original music for this video was composed by Tom Fox.
About:
Max Fisher is a veteran journalist who has reported from over 20 countries. His show, The Bigger Picture, illuminates our world by exploring how it really works, from the sweep of geopolitics to the deepest recesses of our minds. Before going independent, Max was a staff writer at The Atlantic and The Washington Post, a founding editor of Vox, and a long-time foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times, where he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His book, The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World, was an NPR and New Yorker best book of 2022.
Where to find me:
Twitter/X: https://www.x.com/Max_Fisher
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maxfishershow
Business Inquiries: newpress@unitedtalent.com
36 Comments
➡ Protect your privacy on the network level with Cape at https://cape.co/maxfisher. Use code MAXFISHER33 at checkout for 33% off your first 6 months.
Zelenscock and Buttin needs to 1v1 in CS
Россия будет разбить враг Донбасс, Зеленский потерпить поражение!
You dont retake Crimea via brute force displacement. You retake it by making Russia flee.
Ukraine + EU and US
Lots of men from different parts of the world gave died in this war for the Ukraine side. Totally disrespectful to ignore the men and women who left their own country to defend what they think is right
Force Putin to have peace talks? I highly doubt it. Unless a coup of some sorts happens, Putin will continue this war because I think the end of this war will be the end of Putin. I doubt he could spin the failure of war as a some sort of win to the Russian people. He has everything to lose if he can't deliver because what has been this suffering for? Millions dead, millions wounded, if Ukraine will keep the pressure on, destroying refineries and other infrastructure, Russians will face a winter unlike any other. And imagine all the broken and savage men who will return to Russia, it likely will lead to an immense civil unrest. It's going to be a bloodbath.
This is like wolverine vs a coughing baby.. except that the coughing baby is whooping wolverine ass.
"This video would not have been possible without reporting by Reuters, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Kyiv Independent, and the Institute for the Study of War."
That says everything, just pure bullshit!
You mean USA, England, Poland, Germany, France, Denmark, Hungary and Ukraine is doing something impossible?
Опубликован полный текст российского меморандума по Украине
Основные положения:
международно-правовое признание вхождения Крыма, ЛНР, ДНР, Запорожской и Херсонской областей в состав России;
провозглашение нейтралитета Украины, ее отказ от вступления в военные союзы;
запрет на военную деятельность других государств на Украине;
безъядерный статус Украины;
установление предельной численности ВСУ;
снятие экономических санкций, введенных против России;
обеспечение прав и свобод русскоязычного населения, снятие ограничений на деятельность УПЦ, запрет героизации нацизма;
поэтапное восстановление дипломатических и экономических отношений с Украиной;
взаимный отказ от претензий в связи с ущербом от боевых действий;
решение вопросов, связанных с воссоединением семей и перемещенных лиц.
Два варианта прекращения огня:
Вариант 1:
вывод ВСУ с оккупированных Украиной российских территорий в ДНР, ЛНР, Запорожской и Херсонской областях.
Вариант 2 (пакетный):
апрет передислокации ВСУ; прекращение мобилизации и начало демобилизации;
исключение военного присутствия третьих стран;
остановка иностранной военной помощи Киеву;
отказ Киева от диверсий против России;
взаимная амнистия политзаключенных и освобождение удерживаемых гражданских;
отмена военного положения на Украине;
выборы на Украине не позднее ста дней после отмены военного положения.
I am so sorry for those ignorant men, too blind to realise they are fighting someone else's war and killing other poor civilians. This is the tragic, historical result of dividi et impera and panem et circenses, tactics designed to keep us disunited and easily controlled. This failure belongs to us, our parents, and our silence. Democracy has been emptied of meaning because half the population does not vote, and the other half does so uninformed or disinterested, making the common people too ignorant to exploit democracy to demand better diplomacy from politicians. Instead, mainstream political correctness glorifies simple soldiers as heroes. In reality, since the dawn of time, the common soldier has been too ignorant and the officer too arrogant to deeply analyze the war they are entering. Officers blindly follow career ambitions, while poor, desperate men become soldiers to kill other civilians just for a basic job. They do not realize that the people they kill are no different from them—just other brainwashed, desperate individuals. Except for rare exceptions, wars offer no good reason to die; they only allow rich investors to profit from rebuilding and invest in luxury buildings, while wasting tax-funded military budgets on unproductive parasites. Americans are so embarrassingly egocentric that they would rather pollute than ask for their taxes to be spent on trains instead of guns, hailing veterans simply because CIA propaganda told them so.
We thought humanity learned not to trust American politicians after Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Saddam, yet Western arrogance continues to dominate. The EU, Japan, and Canada remain mere puppets of a US government that pushes for defense growth to distract from domestic crises, while European politics has abandoned diplomacy, forcing us to buy Russian gas indirectly from India and the USA at inflated prices. Suspending Russian gas was blatant self-sabotage to favor the US. For ten years, NATO constantly provoked Russia, and anyone leading a country surrounded by an expanding military alliance would lose patience, just like the US during the Cuban Missile Crisis. There is no black-and-white truth, and escalation was not inevitable: The solution is to dismantle NATO, drastically strengthen the UN, and integrate both Ukraine and Russia into the EU under new, free elections. OUR politicians destroied both their economies due to our Hollywood style arrogance. I DON'T WANT TO USE MY TAXES to fix what useless diplomats did wrong.
If the world were borderless, less nationalist, and refused to be deceived by corrupt politicians and exaggerated capitalist interests, there would be far fewer wars. While capitalism is a valid basic concept, human nature corrupts everything, turning it into an extreme system of tax havens, tax evasion, billionaires, and a total lack of essential basic welfare. Now, the public blindly praises AI companies, ignoring that it will eliminate countless jobs and heavily pollute the planet, just because we are lazy and find it convenient. Blaming billionaires alone is cheap demagogy used by influencers to gain followers. Taxing billionaires will not stop pollution if your friends and family keep buying new stuff every week from Amazon or Temu, entirely brainwashed by TikTok: We must maximize the use of what we buy, as re-using comes before recycling…With this I mean that there is no black/white truth: We are too lazy to think deeper. The same applies with everything. We must tax billionaires more, but we must first fight together to drastically strengthen the UN so they have nowhere left to hide their wealth. It will always stay the same until the population cares enough to fight. Stop being passive: start talking with your family and friends, make them outraged, and start fighting.I pray for peace, but we gotta understand the situation if we want it not to happen anymore. We destroyed russian economy. Russian people. Not something to be proud of. Europeans will avoid any kind of other ideas other than theirs. We have not got better than centuries ago. We still are so arrogant. I pray for pace but we gotta understand the situation if we want it not to happen anymore. Orban was far from being a saint, but Hungary’s veto was the only thing saving Europe from the dictatorship of a politically correct monolith, enforced by those who censor anyone with a dissenting opinion. We shall expect diplomats to actually do their jobs and prevent wars instead of triggering them, ignoring tensions until expansion occurs, and then fleeing embassies while using my tax money to perpetuate the conflict.
Investigations and journalists have now confirmed what was already clear to those who aren’t brainwashed: it made no sense for the Russians to destroy the NordStream. Yet, this won’t open European eyes. Who truly benefits when "drones," supposedly Russian, enter NATO borders? Is it a Russia that is struggling to conclude one war, or European defense companies needing to meet shareholder expectations? Is it the USA, demanding we increase military spending, or the EU, desperate to distract us from internal crises and the German recession?
Politics is, first and foremost, diplomacy—a concept the EU has forgotten because its citizens fail to protest. Consequently, we now pay for Russian gas sold to Indians, who sell it to Americans, who then sell it back to us at a premium. We remain idle and inept, blaming migrants while ignoring this blatant self-sabotage. NATO’s utility ended in 1991, yet its expansion continued, poking the bear for decades. If you beat a dog, you cannot be surprised when it bites, nor is the solution to beat it harder.
Despite the 2026 election results in Hungary, the underlying issue remains: diplomacy died long ago because Europe refused to listen to Russia’s concerns regarding NATO’s proximity. You solve a war by understanding the root cause—which is NATO expansion, not just Ukraine—not by excluding dialogue and hiding the truth of what has been happening since 2014. If Europe continues to reject diplomacy, violence will remain the only answer. Both Ukraine and Russia should have been integrated into the EU years ago to ensure stability, rather than being used as pawns in a proxy struggle that serves interests far removed from the well-being of innocent citizens.
Ukraine is not trying to retake Crimea, they want to starve the population and force them back to Russia due to unlivable circumstances, drive them out for good
Glory to Ukraine
The aim is to make it economically suicidal for Russia trying to keep crimea.
No deal. If Russia gives up rostov on don we can discuss leaving Moscow alone. Otherwise Ukraine should take eveything down to Georgia so Europe has a buffer zone.
60 seconds in, I heard already enough bullshit. The Crimea was Russian to begin with. The troops didn't come "out of nowhere"; they where simply there already. Why? At the end of the USSR, the Crimean population, majority of Russians, voted to re-establishment of the Crimean Republic, thus reversing the forced 1953 transfer from the Russian SSR to the Ukrainian SSR, with the Crimea returning to the Russian heartland. This was before the Ukrainian independence. Thus, the Crimea was Russian. Russian military bases remained in the Crimea, including the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Thus, Russian Special Forces broke the siege the Ukrainian invaders had laid around the Crimean Parliament in an attempt to give up the Crimea to the Ukraine.
I don’t think you should change the style at all but I do find the whole pinning a simple word, statement, or fact on the board very humorous. Reminds me of ‘Put the brick on the accelerator’ in Father Ted.
Yeah and wait till Russia starts attacking the grain and ports. Areas for escalation on both sides it's just people are biased in different ways.
Great video. But it doesn't matter, Crimea will never be Ukrainian again. Unless Russia collapses entirely, which is unlikely.
Even if Russia ended the war, do you think Ukraine would be ignorant enough to believe them? War wont end now until Putin has finished his time on earth.
Hate to be the downer, but technically what Ukraine is doing to Crimean civilians counts as a war crime
For some reason, the Ukrainians don't ask the Crimeans for their opinion… I wonder why?
ну 4 кейс очень спорный, в тисках между чем и чем? снизу ничего, сверху Беларусь, справа Россия, так что, что за тиски не понятно, части ВС РФ которые воюют за ту часть донбасса не идут со стороны крыма. Собственно недавнее взятие Константиновки подтверждает, что трудности в крыму не приводят к трудностям на северных участках.
Ukraine is destroying the Russian economy, the WildBerry destruction could lead to a banking crisis. WB owes a lot of money to Russian banks but their business model is not viable. The strikes on oil infrastructure is another massive blow to the economy. Russia is very big and they don't have air defenses to cover such a huge landmass. Putin will not give up, the war will end once someone give him the window treatment.
16:45 Sorry, but this is the bit where I'm scratching my head. Clearly Ukraine isn't able to put boots on the ground and liberate Kherson oblast right now. But does Ukraine have a plan to do so? Of course. And it would be interesting to go into just how that works in practice.
So this video documents war crimes commited againest the civilians living in Crimea by cutting their water, food and energy supply. If Iran attacks water desalination factories in the region, are you gonna make a video cheering Iran's strategy?
Simple answer its survival mode against a conquerer. They simply don't want to give up and be ruled by PUTIN. Any country will do the same. Meanwhile russian people are only force to fight for PUTIN and not fighting for the survival of their homeland.
Ukraine is now an ally of netanyahu and trump….
The lack of a Crimea River is one of the big problems
LOL
I can't wait for 10 years time and all the people who are currently the causing most of this turmoil pass away from old age and we're talking about less than 10 people, if the world was short these people, it'd be a very peaceful time on earth.
It wasn't a revolution, it was a US coup. Stop lying.
The only way Russia is forced to end the war is to defeat them badly.
I totally understand Ukraine fighting for its freedom. Who the heck wants to be a part of Russia, the armpit of Europe…?
It's a shame things seemed to have slowed down a little. But also I wish I knew what it was actually like in Crimea for citizens now because on one hand you have videos like this with the night time NASA satellite images showing Crimea with 80% of its lights out now, and videos of 5 hour long lines of cars trying to leave Crimea, both of which makes it sound absolutely terrible and almost unliveable there. But on the other hand you check the hotel booking pages for the big Crimea coastal tourist towns and lots of them are sold out or near sold out and aren't even offering big discounts. If tourists had fled and the hotels were desperate they'd be offering big discounts surely. So which is it? Whats it actually like? A clip of someones tiktok or something doesn't say anything. I want a long video of someone walking through one of the towns/cities and coastal tourist towns
1) I don't support the Russian invasion of Ukraine which I see as horrific and unprovoked, nonetheless
2) you have taken strong anti-Russian propaganda and then carefully curated it to create a story. You're making shit up here.
I'm not saying people should watch Russian propaganda claiming 35 Ukrainians die for every 1 Russian, but all moderate sources contradict your fabricated account.