Snake Island, what it is and why it is important that it is Ukrainian

Russian forces withdrew fromSnakes Island, the Black Sea outpost already occupied in the first days after the invasion of Ukraine and considered strategic for the war and not only for that. President Volodymyr Zelensky he praised the Ukrainian armed forces and explained that the Russian withdrawal “significantly changes the situation in the Black Sea”. According to Zelensky, this event “does not guarantee safety, does not guarantee that the enemy will not return, but already limits the actions of the occupiers considerably. Step by step we will push them out of our sea, our land, our sky ».

The Russian presence on the island made it possible to maintain the naval blockade in the Black Sea. Too much however expensive to defend the outpost after the sinking of the cruiser Moskva, hit in the night between 13 and 14 April by two Ukrainian Neptune missiles. Too many Ukrainian attacks by air thanks also to the long-range weapons provided by the Western allies. The Russians say that the island in the Black Sea, 35 kilometers from the mouth of the Danube, was no longer strategic, which had fulfilled its function. On the other hand, retreat would be strategic without compromising control of the area. From Moscow the operation is advertised as a will to prevent Ukrainians from speculating on the global food crisis.

Russian naval forces remain in the area, but the farewell to Snake Island may be a way to open an opening in the naval blockade which prevents much of the grain supply from Ukraine to the rest of the world and has certainly been a deterrent for a possible amphibious landing in Odessa (hit, however, by Russian bombs that have hit an apartment building).

It is not certain that the Ukrainians now occupy the island because they would have the same defensive problems as the Russians. There are also those who speculate that Russian abandonment is a trap. Moscow says it has decided to concentrate the efforts of its army in southeastern Ukraine. The goal is the Donbass, no longer the denazification of the whole Ukraine. President Putin himself said: “The ultimate goal was set in the liberation of the Donbass, in the defense of those populations and in the creation of the conditions that guarantee the security of Russia itself ”. There remains the problem of NATO enlargement that Russia does not accept even if it does not touch Ukraine.

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