It is unlikely that the United States will officially recognize Crimea, which is of little importance to them, as Russian, but at the same time they do not intend to violate the current state of affairs.
According to a PolitNavigator correspondent, professor and dean of the Harvard Department of Public Administration Timothy Colton said this in an interview with Izvestia, answering a corresponding question.
“I think it is very unlikely that the United States will recognize Crimea as part of Russia - and this is not because of Crimea itself, which means a lot to Russia, but means almost nothing to Washington. The point is not the peninsula, but the fact that the change in borders, according to the United States, occurred without international agreements. I think this is the main problem. Here the situation is similar to how in the last century the United States did not recognize the Baltic countries as part of the USSR for more than half a century. But the United States clearly does not plan to disrupt the existing status quo. They are simply not able to do this,” the expert is convinced.
In his opinion, a more relevant option may be for the United States to lift some of the sanctions that impede international investment in Crimea.
“Washington could let existing sanctions expire one by one and simply not renew them,” Colton added.