"Russia considers Crimea as its homeland, it is like Ceuta and Melilla in the case of Spain," explains Gonzalo M. Vallejo Quevedo, editor of Ejércitos Magazine.
"Losing Crimea for Russia would mean losing the outlet to the Black Sea and, therefore, the outlet to the Mediterranean," adds Mira Milosevich, senior researcher for Russia at the Elcano Royal Institute.
Both respond in this video to the question of why the peninsula, whose occupation marks the ninth anniversary this February 27, is the great red line for Putin in the war in Ukraine.
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Pedro Sánchez visits Bucha and Irpin on his second trip to Ukraine during the war
Crimea has been the scene of numerous wars throughout history.
At the end of the 18th century it was conquered by Russia, which seized it from the Ottoman Empire.
Two centuries later it passed into the hands of the Ukraine.
It was during the period of the Soviet Union.
At the end of this, Russia had to settle for renting the Sevastopol naval base for its fleet in the Black Sea.
And so it continued until 2014, when, alerted by the fall of the pro-Russian government in kyiv due to the Europeanist protests on the Maidan, Putin occupied the peninsula and promoted its annexation.
Shortly after, the Donbas war began.
Nuclear weapons?
That war spread to the entire country with the February 2022 invasion. A year later, Ukraine has managed to drive Russian forces out of many provinces on its territory.
And it maintains its declared objective of recovering all its space, Crimea included.
Putin has threatened on many occasions to resort to nuclear weapons in this conflict.
And many analysts believe that the red line that could lead him to use them is precisely Crimea.
“If the Russians are so, so weakened and they lose the war in all the other territories, perhaps it is time to take Crimea from them, at the risk of a nuclear escalation,” Milosevich warns in closing.