It is remote, inhospitable, windswept and largely uninhabited, but it has been fought over for centuries. Legend has it that the rocky outcrop in the Black Sea was created by the sea god Poseidon as a home for the greatest of all Greek warriors: Achilles. And just like the demigod, the small cross-shaped island has seen its share of wars. Today, the small piece of land is known as Snake Island (Остров Змийни), and on Monday Ukrainian forces raised the country’s flag there again after retaking the island from Russian occupiers driven out after months of heavy bombing.
Smoke rises from Snake Island in this satellite photo taken June 29. Photo: Planet Labs Pbc/Reuters
The fight for Snake Island has strategic value, but most importantly, it is of national importance to all Ukrainians, especially in their country’s darkest hour, with its back against the wall in Donbass. However, in the small fishing village of Vilkove, on the Ukrainian side of the Danube River and the closest inhabited area to the island, the battle to regain control of the discovery has turned residents’ lives upside down.
Intense fighting on the island between Russian and Ukrainian forces, which began on the first day of the war, has shaken villagers’ homes, in some cases opening cracks in their walls. At Vilkove, 31 miles from Snake Island, shock waves from explosions in the open sea, with nothing to absorb them, reached the shoreline.
43-year-old Yuri Suslov has been fishing the waters of the Black Sea since he was a child. “It’s a very quiet town, so when they started bombing Snake Island, it was very noisy here,” he said.
Yuri Suslov, 43: “The situation is terrible, but I don’t think the Russians will attack us.” Photo: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian
Yuri knows Vilkov’s channels like the back of his hand. On his boat he navigates the narrow waterways, which in the summer months resemble those of Vietnam or Cambodia. Reed and stilt dwellings line the river bank as children play in the water. Every family in Vilkove has a boat, the main means of transportation in the town.
Today, the Vilkove waterways, which flow to the mouth of the Danube, giving access to the Black Sea in the direction of Snake Island, are blocked by military checkpoints, with the coast patrolled day and night.
“The situation is dire, but I don’t think the Russians will attack us,” Yuri said. “You know why? Because we are too close to Romania and if they happen to hit Romania, it will be a NATO war.
Svitlana, 34, a tourist guide in Vilkove, said: “It was terrible. Airplanes flew over our heads and the explosions were very loud. Some windows cracked in older wood-framed homes.
Vilkove is known as Ukrainian Venice because of its water canals. Photo: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian The town survives almost exclusively on fishing. Photo: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian
But worse than the explosions was the economic impact of the battle for Snake Island. Because of the conflict, fishing is prohibited – a nightmare for a city known as the “Venice of Ukraine”, which survives almost exclusively on fishing.
“This city belongs to the fishermen, and they were not even allowed to sail,” said Svetlana. “And fishing is their main source of income, so they suffered great financial losses. In addition, almost 25% of local residents were engaged in tourism. Some offered boat trips, others owned small tour companies, others worked as guides. And now it’s impossible. As a result, about 80% of local residents engaged in water tourism or fishing suffer. My husband was fishing. And now we are out of work. We have no income.”
Snake Island, in the Vilkovo administrative division, became internationally known in February when Russia first seized it after a Ukrainian soldier stationed on the island told an attacking Russian warship: “Fuck you.”
The phrase became one of Ukraine’s most popular resistance slogans, with the Ukrainian postal service issuing a stamp showing a Ukrainian soldier giving the finger to the Russian cruiser Moskva, which was later sunk. Since Russia took control, Ukrainian troops have tried several times to retake the island.
The image of a Ukrainian soldier giving a finger to a Russian warship off Snake Island has become a symbol of resistance. Photo: Oleg Petrasyuk/EPAP Postage stamps were issued in honor of the insubordination of Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island. Photo: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian
Despite the uncertainty of the future of Snake Island, it is closely related to the Vilks and its inhabitants. But very few people have been able to visit it, partly because of the ongoing territorial dispute between Ukraine and Romania over who is its rightful “owner”.
“There were no official tourists on Snake Island,” said Svetlana. “You could get a permit from the Border Patrol and go there, but to be honest it was quite complicated and expensive.”
The only people authorized to visit the island were military patrols, researchers and a handful of lucky divers who regularly explored the area to admire the 49 species of fish inhabiting the waters and the remains of military vehicles and vessels, such as the Soviet submarine ” Pike”, which lies at a depth of 35 meters, reminds that this place was a regular theater of military operations.
Vladlen Tobak, a diving instructor and founder of a diving school in Odessa, said he could not count the number of times he had been to the island. “There was one time when I spent an entire season there with a team of scientists. This is probably the best place for diving in Ukraine. There are a huge number of sunken sites, so wreck diving there is number 1 in Ukraine. There are some remarkable discoveries – for example there is a galley, or as we call it an “amphora carrier”, fourth century BC, over 3000 amphorae. And now historians are really worried about the fate of this object.
Today, the sea around Snake Island is littered with thousands of mines laid by the Russians, a problem that many believe will further impede a return to normality in Vilkovo, even if Snake Island is back in Ukrainian hands for now.
A Ukrainian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said authorities were working on a demining plan using robots, but it would be months before it could be put into action.
Closed beach in Odessa. The coastal city is subject to periodic bombardment by Russian forces. Photo: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian
Russia said it pulled out of the island as a “gesture of goodwill” to show it was not obstructing UN efforts to open a humanitarian corridor allowing grain to be transported from Ukraine.
Friday’s Russian military attack on the town of Sergievka, near Odessa, was interpreted by Ukrainian authorities as payback for Russian troops being forced to leave Snake Island the day before. At least 21 people, including two children, were killed after two Russian missiles hit a high-rise block and a leisure centre.
Ukrainian firefighters clear debris on July 2 after Russian forces shelled an apartment block in Sergievka, southwest of Odessa. Photo: Maxim Penko/AP
The strategic importance of Snake Island lies not only in its proximity to the mouth of the Danube, a position that turns the small piece of land into a natural fortress to prevent the enemy from reaching Europe’s second longest river and an important commercial center, but also in the fact , that controlling it implies holding a military fortress in the Black Sea.
An adviser to Ukraine’s interior ministry, Vadym Denisenko, told Ukrainian television that the capture of Snake Island was a “huge victory.” He said that after Ukraine destroyed the Russian warship Moskva, the Russians wanted to turn Snake Island into an air defense center and use it to control the entire western Black Sea and launch a land invasion.
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“Now the Russians cannot do anything in this area of the sea, except, unfortunately, shell Ukrainian cities with missiles from their ships,” Denisenko said.
In Vilkovo, people know very well that their fate is tied to that of Snake Island, and that Ukraine has won that battle – but not the war. “Many people think that Snake Island is just a useless rock in the middle of the sea,” said Svitlana. “But we who live here, within a few miles of it, know very well that it is not so. And for months we pay the price of our proximity to the island. We know that by the time the war is over, the Russians will try to get it back.
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