It’s a tiny piece of land, barely 500 by 600 meters, with a pontoon, a lighthouse, just a few shelters for soldiers and its share of wartime legends. More than 80 Ukrainian soldiers present on Serpents’ Island, a small Ukrainian territory in the Black Sea, were kidnapped by the enemy in the first days of the war with Russia, confirmed to us, Wednesday, May 19, Natalya Humeniuk, who represents the Southern Ukrainian Operational Command.
She denies, on the other hand, the identity of the soldier drawn up as a hero for having told the Russian attacker “fuck off”. But the military keeps the secret on this symbolic sequence, which will have helped to galvanize the troops, on the Ukrainian side. This Serpents’ Island has been strategic for a long time because it has hydrocarbon-rich subsoils and above all, in times of war, it is located about a hundred kilometers from Odessa.
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An ideal military site in the eyes of Moscow, explains Natalya Humeniuk: “The Russians wanted to conquer the island for several strategic reasons. They wanted to install their anti-aircraft defense there, to better destroy our missiles intended to target their ships, but also tools to decipher our communications. And then a system of cannons mobile, capable of hitting not only Odessa, but the entire territory of Ukraine.”
However, the Ukrainian army has been managing for weeks to limit this Russian assault on the rock of the Black Sea, in particular thanks to the Bayraktar, this Turkish drone which has become a star in Ukraine, to the point that a song is dedicated to it. The combat drone has largely weakened Russian intentions, according to Natalya Humeniuk: “Thanks to a well-prepared operation by our command, our Bayraktar destroyed various Tor vehicles, two mobile guns, their barracks on the island and the equipment with which they planned to jam our communications. Several Russian ships, too, were sunk.”
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Serpents’ Island, for the time being, therefore remains in the hands of Russian forces, but Putin’s troops are in difficulty there. And the Ukrainian general staff is not abandoning the project to reconquer the island, affirms the head of command: “We’re at war. And there’s war even on this island. We knock them out, they replenish, et cetera.” And Natalya Humeniuk adds: “We have a few surprises in store for them.”