Ukraine accuses Russia of dropping explosives on Snake Island

A surveillance video showing explosives dropped on a location known as Snake Island was released by the chief of Ukraine's general staff via Telegram on Friday.

KYIV, Ukraine - Ukraine's army has accused Russia of dropping incendiary white phosphorus on Snake Island on Friday, just after Moscow s forces retreated from the strategic rocky outcrop on the southwestern part of the Black Sea that is key to the Kremlin's war aims. Control of the island, a tiny speck of land 20 miles off the coast of Odesa, has played an outsize role throughout the war, is vital for the control of the Black Sea, including important shipping routes. Some observers said that the strike was a move by Russia to destroy equipment that it had abandoned on the island so that it did not fall into Ukrainian hands. Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister who leads the Center for Defense Strategies, described the strikes as weird because he said most of the shots were missed, according to a video released by the Ukrainian military. He said that the use of white phosphorous seemed strange given that Ukrainian personnel were not believed to be on Snake Island at the time of the attack. He said he believed that Russia had struck the island to complicate any Ukrainian presence there. White phosphorous, which produces a thick white smoke and has a garlic-like smell, can melt deep into flesh when the phosphorous lands on the skin and cause severe burns. It is not considered a chemical weapon because it causes harm by burning at a high temperature rather than by toxic properties. Russia s defense ministry said on Thursday that its forces had withdrawn from Snake Island in a gesture of good will, but on Thursday the retreat came after sustained Ukrainian attacks — including with powerful, newly arrived Western weapons — on the island and on ships seeking to supply it. On Saturday morning, Ukraine s top military official Valeriy Zaluzhnyi said that two sorties of Russian Su- 30 fighter jets flying from the Crimean Peninsula the previous day had dropped phosphoric bombs over the island, known as Zmiiny in Ukrainian. General Zaluzhnyi wrote on the Telegram social media app that the leadership of the Russian Federation does not adhere to its own statements, which declare a gesture of good will. Ukraine has also described Russian missile strikes that killed 21 people in the Odesa region of southern Ukraine on Friday as retaliation for the Russian retreat from Snake Island. Yevhen Yenin, the first deputy minister of internal affairs, said in an interview with The New York Times on Friday that this was an act of revenge for the successful liberation of Snake Island.

The Ukrainians have accused Russia of using white phosphoric bombs several times during the war. In April, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of using phosphorus bombs against residential districts and civilian infrastructure. In mid-May, images of what was believed to be white phosphorus were circulated in the sky above the Azovstal steel plant in the port city of Mariupol during the last weeks of pitched battles as the Russian military tried to force soldiers inside the plant to surrender. Neither of those assertions were independently verified.