By ALEKSTOCK.COM @ Adobe Stock
Snake Island in the Black Sea has been the location of a number of confrontations during the war between Russia and Ukraine that began in February 2022. Now James Marson and Nikita Nikolaienko report on a trip to the island for The Wall Street Journal. They write:
SNAKE ISLAND, Ukraine—This rocky patch of land about 20 miles off the coast still bears the scars of the relentless Ukrainian assault to take it back. The Black Sea island is littered with the mangled remains of Russian military equipment and buildings that have been reduced to carcasses and piles of rubble.
A little more than two years ago, two Ukrainian commandos circling the island in a gyrocopter surveyed the scene of destruction, before descending for a small but important task.
For weeks, Ukraine had pummeled the island’s Russian occupiers with artillery fire and aerial strikes, eventually forcing the Russians to retreat. The commandos came to the island a few days after the withdrawal. Swooping a few feet near the ground, one of them dropped a Ukrainian flag. He returned by boat days later and raised it on the island’s main flagpole, delivering the coup de grace in one of the most critical operations of the war.
The Wall Street Journal made a rare visit to Snake Island earlier this month and spoke with officers from Timur Special Unit, an elite unit of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, who took part in its recapture in summer 2022. They revealed new details about one of the most celebrated chapters in Ukraine’s resistance against Russia’s invasion.
Ukraine is still reaping benefits from recapturing the island, which gave it a foothold in the Black Sea and threw a lifeline to its struggling economy by reopening exports worth billions. In the early hours one recent sunny morning, a line of grain ships snaking along the coast from Ukraine’s main port of Odesa was visible from a small craft heading to the island.
Recapturing the island was also a symbolic victory for Ukraine. The 40-acre outcrop gained iconic status on the first day of the war, when Russian warships approached and demanded the Ukrainian garrison surrender. A border guard responded by radio that the warships should “get f—d,” an act of resistance that characterized Ukraine’s underdog spirit and was later memorialized on a stamp and in songs.
Russia is still contesting Ukraine’s hold on the island, including with a missile strike on Aug. 24, Ukraine’s Independence Day, that left several soldiers concussed. The Journal visited the island with the permission of the Ukrainian military and agreed not to show sensitive military sites that could compromise security.
Read more here.
If you’re willing to fight for Main Street America, click here to sign up for my free weekly email.
