For a Russian time, Serpents’ Island is once again under Ukrainian control. Ukraine, via its army, announced on Thursday that it had regained control of Serpents’ Island in the Black Sea. Russian forces had previously withdrawn from this symbolic territory. Moscow claimed to leave the island “as a sign of goodwill”, after having achieved the “set objectives”.
“We have effectively reestablished our control over Serpents’ Island”, declared a high official of the general staff of the Ukrainian army, Oleksiï Gromov, quoted by the news agency Interfax-Ukraine, specifying that he it was a “physical control” of the soldiers. According to him, the Ukrainian soldiers who participated in the operation, however, returned to their barracks and did not specify whether soldiers remained on the island.
This information was quickly denied by Russia. The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed to have carried out a strike Thursday morning on the island with “high precision missiles”, killing some of the Ukrainian soldiers who went to plant a flag there and causing the survivors to flee.
An emblematic island since the beginning of the conflict
kyiv had however announced on Monday that the Ukrainian flag was floating again on this small piece of land located in the northwest of the Black Sea. This island became emblematic from the first day of the Russian invasion when a member of the small Ukrainian garrison ordered the Russian ship which demanded its surrender to “go fuck itself”. Passed under Russian control, it was taken over by the Ukrainians last week, following intense bombardments.