Making its sovereign existence irreversible.

https://www.justsecurity.org/81789/russias-eliminationist-rhetoric-against-ukraine-a-collection/

2014 was the Russian equivalent of Germany reoccupying the Rhineland in 1936. 2022 is the Russian equivalent of the Spanish Civil War. But Ukraine is far less alone than the Spanish Republic vs Franco, fascist Italy and Germany and the fascism-friendly appeasing Brits like Chamberlain and the Nazi-friendly Montagu Norman, the governor of the Bank of England, who viewed Hitler as a bulwark against Bolshevism. Chamberlain was a director of the Imperial Chemical Company, which saw its Spanish factories expropriated by its workers.

Sevastopol is the centerpiece of a militarized and re-gulag-ed Crimea that poses a permanent threat to Ukraine's viability as a state. Its presence makes Ukraine uninvestable. Conclusion: "it all began in Crimea and it will end in Crimea."