Ukraine is still reaping benefits from recapturing Snake Island, which gave it a foothold in the Black Sea and threw a lifeline to its struggling economy by reopening exports worth billions. 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. Snake Island has for centuries been disputed among the Black Sea powers because of its favorable location. Russia is still contesting Ukraine’s hold on the island. “As the historical saying goes, ‘Whoever controls Snake Island, controls the sea.’ ”
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. Snake Island has for centuries been disputed among the Black Sea powers because of its favorable location. After Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Kyiv constructed a firmer presence on the island to bolster its claim to the waters around it. That included a museum to the mythical Greek warrior Achilles, who was reputed to be buried on the island.
Russian forces in Ukraine
New approximate coastal shipping route
Ukraine
Dnipro
Mol.
Odesa
Romania
CRIMEA
Snake
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Bulgaria
Istanbul
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Turkey
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“As the historical saying goes, ‘Whoever controls Snake Island, controls the sea,’ ” said an officer in HUR, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, who uses the call sign Ned, in an interview on the island.
After seizing it in February 2022, Russia quickly moved air-defense missiles onto the island and multiple rocket-launch systems that could smash any approaching boats. Naval craft ferried troops and supplies from Crimea.
Ukraine’s efforts to take the island back started that April with the sinking of the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s flagship, the Moskva. Ukraine soon began striking the island relentlessly with missiles fired from drones and warplanes, sinking Russian boats and destroying a helicopter just after it landed. Ukrainian forces placed 155mm self-propelled howitzers on barges and moved them around the Danube delta to firing positions inaccessible by land. Multiple-launch rocket systems called Uragan, or Hurricane, fired directly from barges.
“As soon as we started working systematically from the middle of June 2022, we forced them to abandon the island in two weeks,” said the HUR military-intelligence officer in charge of the operation, who is known by the call sign Shakespeare. On June 30, Moscow announced it was pulling out its troops in what it called “a goodwill gesture.”
That was when Shakespeare sent in the two commandos on a gyrocopter, including a 38-year-old officer known as Ramses, to check if the Russians had left. They chose the small craft as it was hard to spot on radar and carried only pistols. They dressed in shorts and Hawaiian shirts to masquerade as tourists if they were captured or ended up in Romanian waters. It is the kind of unconventional approach that HUR is renowned for. The agency is led by Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, a 38-year-old career officer who is revered by his men for his own commando raiding in Crimea after Russia seized the peninsula in 2014.
Soon after the gyrocopter flight, Ukrainian special forces briefly landed on the island and raised a Ukrainian flag on the lower part, before Russia bombarded the area with missiles from a warplane.
Ramses, a career military man, and five other commandos from Timur Special Unit returned on a stealthier mission to secure Ukraine’s control of the island. They approached the cliff on the western side of the island in a low-slung river craft under cover of darkness. Four of them led by Ramses scaled the cliff and worked their way slowly through buildings and past equipment that had been extensively booby trapped by the departing Russians. Amid rain and fog, they started clearing mines and swept up documents that had been left in a hurry. Ramses recovered the flag he had dropped and raised it.
The weather had worsened while they were on shore. On the way back to the mainland, violent waves knocked out their boat’s two motors then overwhelmed it, forcing them to transfer to an inflatable craft with no motor, only oars.
The boat was soon swept out to sea, in the direction of gas drilling rigs where Russian troops were stationed. Ramses sought to rally the men in a seemingly hopeless situation. “Guys, I need to bring up my son,” he said. “I won’t give up so easily. No one will give up without a fight.” The commandos spent the night constantly bailing out water that crashed over the boat’s sides and using a pump to keep it inflated. Another soldier, known as Hunter, tried to radio for help. Standing on a pier on the mainland, Shakespeare heard a brief, crackled message: “This is Hunter, can anyone hear me?” Shakespeare responded and received a rough location.
With no help at hand and the boat still drifting toward the Russian-held rigs, Ramses asked the other men how many magazines they had for their rifles. Each man had about three or four, hardly enough to take on a Russian stronghold. “I’ll be the assault group,” Ramses said, making light of the predicament. “You can cover me.”
Then, in the skies above, they saw a gyrocopter dispatched by Shakespeare to search for them. They set off a flare, and the pilot eventually spotted them and directed a boat to rescue them after 28 hours at sea. Ramses later returned to the island with a team to complete the demining and allow a garrison to be established there. The troops are supplied by small speedboats that leap off the crests of waves and smash into their troughs, jarring the backs of those on board who sit on the floor gripping ropes.
Despite the destruction on the island and the continued Russian threat, there are moments of tranquility. One recent day, soldiers swam in warm waters that were clear enough to spot a sunken Russian armored vehicle.
The major battle in this part of the Black Sea is now being fought for several gas drilling rigs to the east of the island. Ukraine is fighting to expel Russian troops who have stationed equipment there to monitor Ukrainian forces and track missiles and drones that Kyiv is using to target the occupied Crimean Peninsula.
Timur Special Unit recently sent around a dozen speedboats to attack the rigs, peppering them with machine-gun fire and shooting down a Su-30SM, a modern Russian jet fighter, before withdrawing.
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