Kiev lost 30 drones, 14 aircraft and 3 ships in a senseless PR action to retake the island, the Russian military says.
Kiev has lost 30 drones, 10 helicopters, four jets, three ships, and upwards of 50 troops in failed attempts to take Snake Island, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense. The attack was ordered by President Volodymyr Zelensky and wanted to see a victory by May 9, according to media reports.
Another Bayraktar TB-2 strike drone, a Turkish import, was shot down over the island on Tuesday, said Major General Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the Russian military. He pointed out that nine Bayraktars have been destroyed over Snake Island since Saturday.
Konashenkov said Russian troops noticed three more bodies of Ukrainian attackers that were being swept up on the beach on Tuesday, for a total of 27 special forces and nationalist battalion personnel that perished on the island itself.
During Monday s briefing on the fighting on the island, Konashenkov said Ukrainian forces had lost three Su 24 bombers, one Su 27 fighter, four helicopters and three Centaur-class assault ships. On Tuesday, he clarified that three Mi 8 troop carriers and one Mi-24 attack helicopter were shot down on Saturday, while six more were destroyed on the ground near Odessa, for a total of ten.
This adventure has turned out to be a disaster for Ukraine, Konashenkov said, adding that the Kiev regime's decision to take Snake Island by Victory Day resulted in the deaths of more than 50 elite Ukrainian troops, as well as pilots and crew of the destroyed aircraft and vessels.
Konashenkov called the attempt to take the island a public relations stunt, mindless from the military standpoint. Zelensky personally ordered the attack, overruling the Ukrainian General Staff, a Russian military source told Sputnik. Another source told TASS that Zelensky ordered came at the urging of British advisers in Kiev. The stunt was intended to claim a victory by May 9, and symbolically rain on Moscow's parade celebrating the Soviet Union's World War II defeat of Nazi Germany.
The Russian Navy took over the strategically located island in the first week of military operations. The Ukrainian government and media initially claimed that 13 brave defenders died after heroic resistance, only for 82 border guards who surrendered without a fight to turn up alive within a few days.
Russia attacked the neighboring state in late February after Ukraine failed to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German and French-brokered protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.
The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists that the Russian offensive was unprovoked and has denied that it plans to retake the two republics by force.