Russia says it has left Snake Island in Black Sea

Ukrainian Armed Forces said on Thursday that Russian troops had left Snake Island in the Black Sea after they carried out what they said was a successful operation.

One of the early salvos of the war in Ukraine was the small but strategic territory, with demands from a Russian warship calling for the Ukrainian defenders to surrender, who boldly replied with Russian warship, go f yourself. Snake Island, known as Zmiinyi Ostriv in Ukrainian, is located around 30 miles 48 kilometers off the Ukrainian coast and is close to the sea lanes leading to the Bosphorus and Mediterranean Sea.

Moscow had never laid claim to Snake Island before this year, and it's a long way from any part of the Russian mainland. It is located over 180 miles from Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, and there is no geographical or historical basis for Russia to claim it now.

On Monday, the Ukrainian military said it hit a second missile system on the island, as well as multiple Russian personnel in their efforts to keep them at bay.

In a short post on Telegram on Thursday, the Operation Command South of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said that the enemy hastily evacuated the remnants of the garrison in two speedboats and probably left the island. Andriy Yermak, head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said in a Telegram post that Ukraine's armed forces had conducted a remarkable operation. Valeriy Zaluzhniy, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, later said on Telegram that the occupiers had left after being unable to withstand the fire of our artillery, missile and air strikes. He paid tribute to those behind the manufacturing of the Ukrainian self-propelled howitzer Bodogan, saying it played an important role in the liberation of the island, and also said thanks to foreign partners for the provided means of destruction. Zaluzhniy thanked the Ukrainian Armed Forces from the Odesa region, which Snake Island is part of, who took the maximum measures to liberate a strategically important part of our territory. Russia gave a slightly different narrative of the events on the island.

Russian army spokesman Igor Konashenkov said at a briefing that its forces left the island as a gesture of goodwill. He said that the Russian Federation's Armed Forces finished fulfilling the assigned tasks in Snake Island and withdrew the garrison that had been operating there. Konashenkov intimated that the removal of Russian troops would allow for the passage of grain, this solution will prevent Kyiv from speculating on an impending grocery crisis due to the total control of the northwestern part of the Black Sea by Russia. The Ukrainian government rejected Russia's version of events, with Yermak denouncing the explanation.

In Russia, they say about the alleged withdrawal of troops from Snake Island and present it as a 'gesture of goodwill. Russia does not interfere with humanitarian corridors for the export of Ukrainian grain. Yermak said on his official Telegram channel that all this is a fake.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces have knocked the Russians out of Snake Island first, Yermak said. Russians are shelling warehouses with grain. In the morning a warehouse in the Dnipropetrovsk region was fired upon. Ukraine's defense intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, said in May that whoever holds Snake Island controls the surface and to some extent the air situation in southern Ukraine. The island's control can block the movement of civilian vessels in all directions to the south of Ukraine at any time, according to Budanov.

In the last year, President Volodymyr Zelensky flew to Snake Island, where there are no voters but sheep, to emphasize that it mattered. This island, like the rest of our territory, is Ukrainian land, and we will defend it with all our might, he said.