Snake Island

The island was first defended by Ukrainian forces who told a Russian warship 'go f*** yourself'

Start your Independent Premium subscription today. The Ukrainian soldier involved, Roman Hrybov, was awarded a medal in March for his services. It claimed they were pushed out by Ukrainian forces.

Moscow says the withdrawal is a 'goodwill gesture' that proves its commitment to UN-led efforts to resume grain exports.

Since Russia’s invasion, Ukrainian grain shipments from its Black Sea ports have stalled and more than 20 million tonnes of grain are stuck in silos. Russia’s war in Ukraine has spurred a global food crisis, with prices for grains, cooking oils, fuel and fertiliser soaring. Moscow said the port had been de-mined and was ready to resume grain shipments. The United Nations has been trying to broker a deal to resume both Ukrainian food exports and Russian food and fertiliser exports and stave off the risk of “hunger and destitution” for hundreds of millions of people. “On June 30, as a gesture of goodwill, the Russian armed forces completed their tasks on Snake Island and withdrew a garrison stationed there,” the ministry said, in an announcement that came after Ukraine stepped up its attacks on the outpost. Snake Island is a tiny but strategically located Ukrainian islet in the Black Sea that was taken by Russia in the opening stages of its war against Ukraine.

Moscow says retreat shows 'goodwill' but Kyiv claims victory after bombardment of strategic Black Sea outpost.

The defence ministry claimed the move shows Moscow is not impeding United Nations efforts to organise a humanitarian corridor to export Ukrainian agricultural ...

Everything is going according to plan,’ he told a news conference. He said they were ‘the liberation of the Donbas, the protection of these people and the creation of conditions that would guarantee the security of Russia itself’. Speaking on a visit to Turkmenistan early Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said his goals in Ukraine haven’t changed since the start of the war. A first cargo ship has left the Russian-occupied Ukrainian port of Berdyansk after the waters around it were demined to resume grain shipments, a local official said. In April the Moskva – the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet – was sunk by a Ukrainian missile. Russia securing the site could have helped it with a future assault on the major port of Odessa.

Moscow framed the withdrawal from the Black Sea island as an effort to create a humanitarian corridor, while Kyiv said it came after intense artillery ...

The weapons: Ukraine is making use of weapons such as Javelin antitank missiles and Switchblade “kamikaze” drones, provided by the United States and other allies. The latest: NATO leaders are meeting Thursday in Madrid for a third and final day. The fight: A slowly regenerating Russian army is making incremental gains in eastern Ukraine against valiant but underequipped Ukrainian forces. Their defiance has been celebrated across Ukraine on stamps and posters and hailed as a rallying moment in the defense of their country. Meanwhile, NATO leaders are meeting in Madrid on Thursday for a third and final day. CAESAR has a firing range of about 26 miles. The Ukrainians responded with a profane insult, prompting the Russians to open fire. The Washington Post could not independently verify those claims. In pro-Kremlin outlets, Russia’s withdrawal from the island was described as a setback for Moscow but also as a move necessary to save the lives of Russian soldiers. Pro-Russian war reporters and bloggers also have linked the reinforcement of Ukraine’s fighting capabilities to the French artillery system CAESAR, stationed in Odessa, as one of the reasons for the withdrawal, signaling a win for Kyiv and its Western allies. “On June 30, as a gesture of goodwill, the Russian Armed Forces completed their assigned tasks on Snake Island and withdrew the garrison stationed there,” Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement. “[We] demonstrated to the world community that the Russian Federation does not interfere with the efforts of the UN to organize a humanitarian corridor for the export of agricultural products from the territory of Ukraine.”

After invading on the first day of the war in February 2022, Ukraine has reclaimed Snake Island from Russian Forces.

The Greeks during the Ottoman Empire renamed it Fidonisi, meaning Snake Island, after the Battle of Fidonisi between the Russian and Ottoman fleets during the Russo-Turkish War of 1787 to 1792. It is an island owned by Ukraine and is reported to be populated by around 100 people. Snake Island, also known as Serpent Island or Zmiinyi Island, is located in the Black Sea.

Russia has pulled back its forces from a Black Sea island where they have faced relentless Ukrainian attacks, but is keeping up its push to encircle the ...

— Speaking on a visit to Turkmenistan on Thursday, Putin said his goals in Ukraine haven't changed since the start of the war. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Putin met on the sidelines of a summit in Turkmenistan, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. On Thursday, Iranian state media said Iran has proposed expanding financial exchanges with Russia and cooperating in the energy field. The war has raised the specter of food shortages and political instability in countries reliant on Ukrainian wheat, including Indonesia, Egypt, Yemen and Lebanon. Nevertheless, Haidai noted that as of Thursday evening, evacuations from the city were impossible due to heavy shelling and mined access roads. It was unclear if the evacuation meant a change in Moscow's designs on Ukraine's biggest port, which is crucial for shipping grain to Africa, the Middle East and other parts of the world. The island's Ukrainian defenders were captured by the Russians but later freed as part of a prisoner exchange. He said the package will include rockets and advanced air defense systems. Russia has denied that and said Ukraine needs to remove mines from the Black Sea to allow safe navigation. — A senior Russian official warned that Moscow could consider Western sanctions as a cause for war. Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai said Russian reconnaissance units trying to enter Lysychansk on Wednesday were repelled. The exact number of troops was not disclosed.

Stories about Snake Island stretch back millennia to the ancient Greeks' mythological Trojan war.

- The day the stamp was issued, Ukraine sank the same Russian vessel, the Moskva, which had demanded the island surrender and which had been the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. - Stories about the island stretch back millennia to the ancient Greeks’ mythological Trojan war. Russian forces have withdrawn from Snake Island in the Black Sea in a move Ukraine hailed as a victory and Russia said showed Moscow was not seeking to hinder the United Nations’ efforts to organise a corridor for the export of Ukrainian food products.

Ukraine's ability to use GPS-guided rockets supplied by the U.S. to sustainably and accurately batter the Russian garrison seems to have been the final ...

The CAESAR has just enough range to strike the island from Ukrainian soil and has a highly precise digital fire control system. Thus, Kyiv may refrain from repeating Russia’s error of dispatching so many valuable assets to defend a seemingly indefensible island. Russian sources also make unconfirmed claims of a failed Ukrainian landing attempt on the island. However, Ukraine’s military is also probably now deeply aware of how vulnerable forces on Zmiinyi are to attack. For the following month, Russia’s Snake Island outpost grew in size, largely unmolested thanks to the protective umbrella of long-range surface-to-air missiles on the Moskva stationed a short distance away. If Moscow genuinely lifts the blockade with crippling effect on Ukraine’s economy and global hunger, though, that would be a significant concession.

Snake Island became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance in the first days of the war, when the rocky outcrop's defenders told a Russian warship that called on ...

"The NATO countries' leaders wish to… The process has begun." Johnson had said on Tuesday that Putin would not have started the war in Ukraine if he was a woman and said the military operation was "a perfect example of toxic masculinity". Putin on Wednesday accused the alliance of seeking to assert its "supremacy", telling journalists in the Turkmenistan capital of Ashgabat that Ukraine and its people are "a means" for NATO to "defend their own interests." The conflict in Ukraine has dominated the NATO summit in Madrid, where the leaders said Russia "is the most significant and direct threat to allies' security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area". "We are going to stick with Ukraine, and all of the alliance are going to stick with Ukraine, as long as it takes to make sure they are not defeated by Russia," he said.

Ukraine scores a key symbolic victory on the Black Sea island where a lone Ukrainian soldier famously tossed a salty expletive at a powerful Russian ...

The weapons: Ukraine is making use of weapons such as Javelin antitank missiles and Switchblade “kamikaze” drones, provided by the United States and other allies. The fight: A slowly regenerating Russian army is making incremental gains in eastern Ukraine against valiant but underequipped Ukrainian forces. The island, which covers just 0.06 square miles, sits on a major shipping lane and access point to the key port of Odessa. Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that its forces had “completed their assigned tasks” on the island. The latest: NATO leaders are meeting Thursday in Madrid for a third and final day. A blitz of Ukrainian artillery, rockets and airstrikes this month forced the Russians to pull out, Valery Zaluzhny, commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, wrote in a Facebook post. News of the salty verbal exchange between Russian forces aboard the Moskva and the Snake Island guards ricocheted around the world. It’s also unclear whether Ukraine will send troops back to the island. He shared video footage of missiles hitting the island and the surrounding waters. He also thanked foreign allies for weapons that aided the fight. They offered significantly different accounts of the events that led to that outcome, however. Ukraine said initially that its guards on Snake Island, a tiny piece of land about 25 miles off Ukraine’s southeastern coast, had been killed. Roman Hrybov, the Ukrainian soldier who reportedly cursed at the Russians, was released in a prisoner swap in March and given a medal for valor.

Just 48 kilometers from the shore, Snake Island was a key battleground between Ukrainian and Russian forces.

“It was always going to be very costly for the Russians to maintain a degree of control in the western Black Sea.” "KABOOM! No Russian troops on Snake Island anymore. “The blockade hindered the exports of grains and steel, one of the key revenue-generating items for the Ukrainian budget.” "From a military point of view, the decision is unfortunately correct. The Russian garrison on Snake Island also gave the Russian military the capacity to support an assault on the key Ukrainian port city of Odesa, just 140 kilometers away. The site of a widely publicized act of Ukrainian resistance when defending forces told Russian sailors to “go **** themselves” on the second day of the war, Russia captured Snake Island shortly after.

The head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office, Andriy Yermak, confirmed the withdrawal of Russian forces from the island. “No Russian troops on ...

The Russian Defense Ministry claimed it had left the small island “as a symbol of goodwill” after completing its mission there. “No Russian troops on the Snake Island anymore. Their response, “Russian warship, go f— yourself,” led to an artillery attack from the ship and Ukrainian troops were forced to surrender the island.

A multi-storey apartment building and a recreation centre struck in southern port city, Ukrainian officials say; Volodymyr Zelenskiy says Russian defeat ...

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said Ukraine’s path to European Union membership should “not take years or decades” and vowed to make Ukraine’s part of the process “perfect”. He said “Our path to membership should not take years or decades. A cargo ship left the Russian-occupied Ukrainian port of Berdiansk for the first time since the city was seized by Moscow’s troops, according to a pro-Russia official. Two children were among 19 people killed by a missile strike in Odesa, according to the latest update from regional governor Maksym Marchenko. He said “As a result of a night missile strike by Tu-22 strategic aircraft from the Black Sea in the Belgorod-Dniester district of Odesa region, three X-22 missiles hit an apartment building and a recreation centre.31 people were hospitalised, including 4 children and a pregnant woman. Léonie Chao-Fong will guide you through the next few hours of our live coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine. “There is a lot of shelling and from multiple directions. Ukrainian forces said Thursday they have pushed Russian forces from Snake Island, a strategic Black Sea outpost off the southern coast. To enable our friends in the European Union to make another historic decision for us just as quickly and in a consolidated way.” We are already taking some steps in this direction: teacher training and the supply of textbooks.” The process of Sweden and Finland joining Nato appears to have some difficulty ahead of it yet. Photographs from the scene showed smoke billowing from a four-storey building with its upper floor partly destroyed. The Guardian spoke with teachers in Russian-occupied parts of south-east Ukraine whose identities, for safety reasons, cannot be revealed. If they do not sign, they will lose their jobs and be at risk of retaliation from Russian forces.

Russian missiles hit an apartment building and a resort near Ukraine's Black Sea port of Odesa early Friday, killing at least 18 people and wounding dozens, ...

It also caused a fire in an attached store building. It also caused a fire in an attached store building. "You have created an impressive anti-corruption machine," she told the lawmakers by video link. Ukrainian authorities said Russian missiles had hit an apartment building and two holiday camps. Kyiv hailed the move, with Ukraine’s Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko saying on Telegram that “victory in the borshch war is ours... Ukraine is one of the top global wheat suppliers, but shipments have been halted by Russia's invasion, causing global food shortages.

Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com · Missiles hit apartments, resort · Zelenskiy hails victory at Snake Island · Russia assaulting Lysychansk, ...

Moscow denies it is to blame for a food crisis, which it says is caused by Western sanctions hurting its own exports. Ukraine's last bastion in Luhansk is the city of Lysychansk across the Siverskyi Donets river, which is close to being encircled under relentless Russian artillery assault. "Almost all the city infrastructure is destroyed. Russia calls the invasion a "special operation" to root out nationalists. "They have simply brought in all their reserves to hit us." We helped to carry them away,” said Oleksandr Abramov, who lives nearby and had rushed to the scene when he heard the blast.

A Russian missile strike in Ukraine's southern port of Odesa early on Friday (1 July) killed at least 10 people, a regional official said, a day after ...

A Ukrainian guard, ordered by Russia’s flagship cruiser Moskva to surrender, radioed back “Russian warship: go fuck yourself”. “I don’t know how it’s going to end, but it will not end with Russia defeating Ukraine,” Biden told a news conference. “Almost all the city infrastructure is destroyed. “They have simply brought in all their reserves to hit us.” It does not yet ensure that the enemy will not come back,” he said in his nightly video address. “It does not yet guarantee security.

UKRAINIAN FORCES have recaptured the strategically important Snake Island base in the Black Sea, it was reported on Thursday.

He said: “The superiority in fire power of the occupiers is still very much in evidence. He said: “The number of dead as a result of a strike on a multi-story apartment building has now risen to 10.” Operational command "South" reports that there are already 17 victims of a missile attack on a house in the Odessa region (one of them is a child).— Access Denied (@underdogdenis5) It comes as a Russian missile strike on the southern port city of Odessa killed 10 people in the early hours of Friday morning, according to a regional official. Earlier reports had indicated that six people had died including three children as a result of the strike on a residential building. In contrast Russia argued on Thursday that it had withdrawn from Snake Island as a “gesture of goodwill”.