Ukraine’s Snake Island was one of Russia’s first conquests in the wider war between Russia and Ukraine that began on the night of Feb. 23.
Russian naval forces on Feb. 24 ordered the island’s 100-strong garrison to surrender—and received an infamous reply. “Russian warship, go fuck yourself.”
The Russians killed some of the Ukrainians and captured others, then occupied the .07-square-mile island 80 miles south of Odessa, Ukraine’s strategic port on the northwest edge of the Black Sea.
Nine weeks later, the Ukrainians have turned the tables. A Ukrainian navy missile in mid-April battery sank the cruiser Moskva, one of the Russian warships that led the initial attack on the island. And now Kyiv’s Turkish-made TB-2 drones are dismantling the Russian garrison’s air-defenses.
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