How Ukraine Lost and Retook Snake Island

Lying just a few dozen kilometers from Odessa, tiny Snake Island appears an unprepossessing place — a mere speck of rock amid the waters of the Black Sea. Yet in the first six months of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, this barren outcrop featured at the heart of some of the war’s biggest stories.

It was here that Ukrainian defenders uttered the now-immortal line, “Russian warship, go f—k yourself.” It was in the nearby sea that the cruiser Moskva was sunk while the ship was defending the island’s airspace. And it was here that Ukraine scored one of its great propaganda victories, when Russian forces were eventually pressed into retreat and the yellow-and-blue flag was raised once again.

Yet despite all the coverage, mysteries remain. With Russian equipment losses across the campaign estimated at close to $1 billion, why did Moscow expend so much materiel holding this lump of rock? And how did Snake Island come to occupy such an important place in both nations’ narratives?

This is the story of the Battle for Snake Island — and of how this tiny place came to have such an outsize impact on the war in the Black Sea.

A Rock With a Sacred Reputation

Although Snake Island only exploded into global consciousness following the 2022 invasion, the signs had been building for years that this unimpressive rock was a future flashpoint. In Russia, prominent ultra-nationalists such as Alexander Dugin had begun to wax lyrical about its “sacred geography” — a supposed mystical quality that allowed its owners to influence history. In the West, meanwhile, military analysts were already wargaming invasion scenarios and noting that Russian weapons stationed there could cut Ukrainian ships off from the Black Sea.

People invested in the futures of both Ukraine and Russia were paying close attention to this island. Which raises the most basic question of all: what is it, really?

The answer is: not much. At a mere 0.2 km², Snake Island is barren, flat, and historically useless. Sitting 35 km from the coasts of both Ukraine and Romania, it spent much of history being ignored. With no deposits to mine, no fresh water to sustain life, and nothing in the way of local wildlife — including snakes — there was simply no point in settling there.

From Achilles’ Shrine to Soviet Outpost

That is not to say the island never drew human attention. Way back in ancient times, a shrine to Achilles stood there, and the rock occasionally hosted lighthouses built to guide ships into the Greek city of Olbia. In modern times, though, it was used mostly as a pawn for warring powers to trade.

In the early 19th century, that meant the Ottoman Empire handing it to Imperial Russia. In 1878, it meant the newly created Kingdom of Romania taking ownership — an arrangement that lasted, technically, right up to 1948. In reality, the Second World War saw the USSR chase away the Romanian garrison and establish its own control over Snake Island.

This history is likely why ultra-nationalists like Dugin venerate the place. The Soviets used their wartime occupation to dominate the northwest Black Sea, thereby linking the island to Russia’s patriotic war narrative. Still, that bond did not stop the island from following Kyiv out of the USSR’s collapse in 1991 — not that newly independent Ukraine had much use for it.

How a Useless Island Became a Flashpoint

The only real advantage Snake Island conferred on Ukraine was to extend the country’s exclusive economic zone further into waters known to be rich in undersea oil and gas deposits. That alone was enough to make it contested: in the early 2000s, neighboring Romania tried to have the outcrop reclassified as a mere “rock,” and therefore too small for any nation to lay claim to the surrounding seabed.

Then came 2014, and Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea. A mere 289 km from the stolen peninsula, Snake Island suddenly became both an advantage to Kyiv and a major vulnerability. It was an advantage because it could be used as an outpost for monitoring Russian activity in Crimea, complete with a radar station and air-defense systems. It was a vulnerability because it now represented the key to keeping Ukraine’s ports open.

Ukraine is a major exporter of grain, most of it shipped via the Black Sea. Among the most important ports are Odessa and Kherson — ports that require vessels to pass near Snake Island to reach the open sea. That geography prompted Western analysts to warn that Russia might one day try to seize the island. It also prompted a 2021 visit by President Volodymyr Zelensky, who declared: “This island, like the rest of our territory, is Ukrainian land, and we will defend it with all our might.”

Little could the former comedian have known that Moscow would soon put his promise to the test.

”Russian Warship, Go F—k Yourself”

Despite Zelensky’s fighting words, the size of the garrison actually stationed on Snake Island revealed how Kyiv truly felt about defending it. As the sun set on the tense evening of February 23, 2022 — with war now mere hours away — the island was held by fewer than 100 people. The likely reason is that no one realistically expected the garrison to repel an attack. Well within range of fighter jets launched from Crimea, the island was predicted to fall within hours of any conflict starting.

That is exactly what happened. At 5 a.m. on February 24, Vladimir Putin appeared on television to announce a “special military operation” against Kyiv — a euphemism for a mad, imperial war of conquest. Minutes after he finished speaking, missiles struck Ukrainian cities. At the borders, Russian tanks, trucks, and helicopters poured across in an all-out assault. On Snake Island itself, all the guards could do was wait for the inevitable.

That afternoon, a giant appeared on the horizon. The Russian Black Sea Fleet’s flagship cruiser, Moskva, was approaching, backed by the patrol ship Vasily Bykov. The pair was to provide cover while the 810th Independent Marine Guards Brigade overran the island, which had already been hit with airstrikes. As far as anyone can tell, taking it was considered a small, formal step in Russia’s larger plan to stage a landing at Odessa.

A Surrender, a Legend, and the Truth Between Them

As the Moskva closed in, it sent the Ukrainian garrison a blunt message: “I suggest you lay down your weapons and surrender to avoid bloodshed and needless casualties. Otherwise, you will be bombed.” In response, 31-year-old Ukrainian border guard Roman Hrybov took the radio and declared: “Russian warship, go f—k yourself.” It became not just a meme but a catchphrase, a motto, a slogan — one that showcased Ukraine’s defiance in the face of an overwhelming enemy.

That defiance is all the more remarkable given that Hrybov subsequently surrendered. Despite initial reports that all of Snake Island’s border guards had been killed flipping the Moskva the bird, it later emerged that 82 of them had agreed to lay down their arms — a fact that came to light only after they had been posthumously declared Heroes of Ukraine.

Nobody could accuse them of cowardice. Hrybov later described his time as a prisoner of war, and the border guards plainly suffered for their defiance. Initially held in a tent encampment through the bitter Ukrainian winter, the men were subjected to cruel psychological games. At one point, their Russian captors tied nooses around their necks so tight that some could barely breathe, then drove them into the countryside, leaving Hrybov certain they would be executed.

“We were treated worse than dogs,” he later said. Thankfully, none of his jailers knew exactly who had told the Moskva to do unspeakable things to its own backside; had they known, his captivity would likely have been worse. In the end, Hrybov was freed alongside some of the other border guards in a prisoner swap. By then, his words were famous.

It is remarkable that the last stand on Snake Island became such a powerful piece of propaganda. After all, it was a failure: Russia seized the island on the first day of the invasion, and this was no Ukrainian Alamo — the defenders surrendered and were captured. Yet, like other noble failures before it, such as Dunkirk, that evening went down in legend, not as the tale of a minor Ukrainian defeat but as a symbol of defiance in the face of Putin’s war machine. Now Kyiv just needed to win the island back.

Eating a Porcupine

With the island in their possession, the invading Russian force set about turning it into a fortress bristling with weapons. That meant installing powerful Tor and Pantsir air-defense systems to knock down Ukrainian counterattacks, capable of swatting drones and planes from the sky with ease. It also meant keeping the Moskva close.

Sending a massive warship to take one tiny island was always overkill, but the Moskva continued to patrol the waters near Snake Island, adding its own air-defense umbrella. And what an umbrella it was. Armed with an S-300F missile system, the ship was essentially a floating double battery, lurking 55 km offshore and providing cover not just to Snake Island but to the other ships gathering in the area. With the Moskva’s protection, there was little chance of Ukraine’s drones damaging any Russian vessel — and that effectively handed Putin control of the northwest Black Sea.

As Ukraine’s defense intelligence chief despairingly noted, whoever controlled Snake Island controlled “the surface and to some extent the air situation in southern Ukraine.” For Russia, that meant the ability to enforce a blockade, strangling the Ukrainian economy and sowing chaos in the world’s grain markets.

Odessa on the Menu

The blockade was not projected to last long. From the moment Snake Island fell, Russian forces began preparing for a landing at Odessa — one they believed would see the port city quickly capitulate. These were still the early days of the war, when the world assumed the armored column driving toward Kyiv would force the city’s surrender rather than become target practice for Ukraine’s forces, and when it was still taken for granted that Russia would overrun the entire country.

In the northwest Black Sea theater, that meant Odessa was next on the menu. Ropucha-class landing ships soon appeared near Snake Island, and Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates began patrolling the Odessa shore. Exercises were undertaken in preparation for an assault — one the Ukrainians could do little about.

The Ukrainian Navy had been unimpressive even at the outset of war. Now it was mostly lying on the seabed, either sunk or deliberately scuttled. The only card left to play was to mine the waters around Odessa. That gamble paid off in the sense that the anticipated Russian landing never came, but it did not solve the fundamental problem of the blockade.

Worse, intelligence indicated that Russia would soon install a long-range S-400 air-defense system on Snake Island — one that could command the skies over Ukraine’s entire southern coast. In short, it was a desperate situation.

A Spectacular Russian Error

Luckily for Ukraine, it was a situation in which Russia had already made a spectacular error. The Moskva’s role in taking Snake Island was overkill: here was a massive cruiser designed to destroy aircraft carriers 1,000 km away with P-1000 Vulkan anti-ship missiles, instead slumming it offshore and being sworn at by border guards. But “overkill” was not the only way to describe the cruiser’s presence. It was also an unnecessary risk.

On March 24, Ukraine penetrated Russia’s air defenses and blew up the smaller ship Orsk while it lay in port in the occupied city of Berdyansk. At the time, it was Russia’s biggest naval loss in decades and a serious embarrassment. Rather than respond by keeping their expensive warships farther from Ukrainian lines, Russian commanders apparently dismissed the threat entirely.

With nothing in Ukraine’s arsenal thought capable of taking down the flagship, the Moskva was allowed to keep patrolling near Snake Island — as confident in its invulnerability as a bristling porcupine. But when the wolves are desperate enough, even porcupines can become prey.

Death From Above

On May 27, 1905, Japanese torpedo boats did the unthinkable. During the Battle of Tsushima, they sank the Knyaz Suvorov, the flagship of Imperial Russia’s Second Pacific Squadron. That afternoon marked the last time a Russian flagship was sunk in wartime for a very long time — until April 13, 2022, the day Ukraine at last managed to destroy the Moskva.

The precise details remain sketchy. Russia insisted that a storm at sea and a fire combined to cause a horrific accident, an explanation so implausible that Moscow might as well have blamed the sinking on witches. The genuine controversy is whether Ukraine, as Kyiv claimed, hit the warship with its own Neptune anti-ship missiles, or whether longer-range Western weapons were used. Either way, the result was the same.

The Moskva went under the waves — the biggest Russian naval loss since the Second World War, and the country’s first flagship sunk in wartime in nearly 120 years. With her went an unknown number of sailors, possibly as few as one and possibly as many as 250, along with something else: the navy’s sense of invulnerability. The destruction generated a tsunami of memes, but it also forced a change in naval strategy, as the Black Sea Fleet pulled away from Ukraine’s coastline and back toward the safety of Crimea. That meant the Moskva’s air-defense umbrella was never replaced, and the Russian garrison on Snake Island would have to rely on its own anti-aircraft systems.

Enter the Bayraktar TB2

In theory, that should have been fine. The Tor system the garrison had — also known as the SA-15 “Gauntlet” — was famous as a drone killer. Or, at least, it had been. Ukraine was about to challenge that reputation with one of its newest weapons: the Bayraktar TB2.

Made by Turkey, the TB2 falls into the category of Medium Altitude, Long Endurance drones, with the slightly odd abbreviation MALE. Effectively an attempt to do for Turkey’s UAV industry what the MQ-9 Reaper did for America’s, the Bayraktar is less sophisticated than its American counterpart. It is slow-moving, with a smallish payload, and lacks much of the Reaper’s advanced communications software. What it does have is an excellent combat track record.

While the US has mostly used its drones to target militants — and, on occasion, to accidentally bomb weddings — Turkey’s have been deployed to serious warzones. Ankara sent them after Kurds in Syria and used them to harass Russian air-defense systems in Libya, where Moscow was backing a rival warlord. Most strikingly, TB2s helped Azerbaijan win the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War against Armenia as decisively as could be imagined.

Ukraine clearly had high hopes when it signed an agreement with Turkey to produce 48 of the drones, deploying the first in combat against Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas in October 2021. Even so, nobody anticipated how decisive they would prove in the Battle for Snake Island.

Plucking the Garrison

Equipped with anti-jamming gear and armed with lightweight MAM-C smart micro-munitions capable of traveling 8 km, TB2s were soon buzzing over the Black Sea. Their first strike came on May 2, 2022, when missiles slammed into a pair of Raptor-class boats near the island, destroying them both. The twin strike was another embarrassment for the Russian Navy and a warning that its air-defense systems were not up to the task of replacing the Moskva’s powerful umbrella.

It seems likely that the Russians simply assumed this was another fluke — another infuriating instance of Ukraine getting lucky. It was only after four more days had passed that the Snake Island garrison realized how exposed it was. On May 6, TB2s struck the island itself, obliterating the Tor air-defense system, the very weapon supposedly excellent at taking down drones.

Suddenly, Russian forces on the island were unprotected. They were not just sitting ducks but ducks that had plucked themselves, seasoned their own skin, and climbed into the oven. Now all the Ukrainians had to do was turn up the temperature.

The Battle for Snake Island

With the island’s air defenses knocked out, the central challenge was stopping Russia from simply installing replacements. Ukraine’s TB2s proved spectacularly successful at this. Now effectively free to operate as they pleased, the drones hovered over the waters out of sight, striking only when assured of maximum damage.

On May 7, that meant waiting until a boat carrying a new SA-15 was on the island’s only landing ramp before blowing it to smithereens, leaving a burning wreck blocking the sole unloading point. On May 8, it meant striking a Russian helicopter in the midst of unloading troops, causing not just material damage but panic among the survivors. For the best part of a week, Ukraine softened the island’s defenses this way, tormenting the occupying force and refusing it a moment’s respite. As TB2s sank assault boats and resupply craft, Su-27 fighter jets bombed the buildings on the island, exploiting the undefended skies to obliterate all possible shelter.

Yet that week ended not with a Russian retreat but with a new air-defense system finally being installed. By May 12, the Russian Navy had cleared the destroyed boat from the landing ramp and managed to rearm Snake Island. For all of Ukraine’s successes, the situation was almost back to where it had been the day after the Moskva sank.

A Garrison That Could Not Be Held

This was far from a Russian victory. In reinforcing Snake Island, Moscow had lost swathes of materiel — and for what? With the Moskva gone and no other warship taking over its role, the garrison remained highly vulnerable. It is tempting to assume there was a practical reason for persisting, but the math does not add up.

While holding the island meant choking off the Odessa port, Russia had other options for maintaining a blockade, and with the island now so hard to defend, the cost of keeping a presence there far outweighed the benefit.

Perhaps the navy was simply too proud to abandon something captured from an enemy it deemed inferior. Perhaps the leadership in Moscow was too enamored of the island’s “sacred geography.” Certainly, there was no sign in late May and early June that a retreat was on the cards. Pro-Kremlin media spent those days pumping out domestic propaganda calling Snake Island vital to the war effort, and government-aligned military experts gave interviews claiming that pro-Moscow rebels in Transnistria could be overrun by NATO forces if the island fell to Ukraine.

In the end, the decision on retreat would not be Putin’s to make. It would be decided more than 1,500 km away, in Copenhagen.

The Harpoon Changes the Math

Around the same time Ukraine’s Turkish-made drones were making mincemeat of the island’s air defenses, Denmark was signing an agreement to supply Kyiv with Harpoon anti-ship missiles. Capable of traveling farther and more accurately than Neptunes, they would make Snake Island more vulnerable than ever — something the Ukrainians were only too happy to demonstrate.

The Harpoon systems arrived around mid-June. On the 17th, two missiles were used to annihilate the Russian Navy vessel Vasiliy Bekh as it approached the island. The destruction of the Vasiliy Bekh changed the calculation in ways even the sinking of the Moskva had not. Beforehand, Snake Island had merely been dangerous to resupply. Now, the act of getting ships there crossed the line from “extremely risky” to “actively suicidal.”

As drones menaced the island’s defenses and Harpoon missiles thudded into supply boats, the Kremlin appears to have finally stopped believing its own propaganda. Shortly before the end of the month, the messaging explaining the necessity of holding the rock disappeared from Russian media. On June 30, the Russian garrison likewise vanished from the island. Moscow naturally tried to spin it, claiming Snake Island had been abandoned as a “gesture of goodwill” — but even this cynical lie could not hide the truth.

Ukraine had won. Snake Island could at last be recaptured.

Re-Raising the Flag

Recapture proved easier said than done. After the last Russian troops left the burnt and blasted island, there was a week of emptiness — seven days of stillness in which the only movement came from grass twisting in the breeze and waves lapping at the scorched landing ramp. Peaceful as it was, it represented a problem for Kyiv. Russia had retreated, but its warships still patrolled the nearby waters, and Snake Island remained without adequate air defenses.

Were the Ukrainians to reoccupy the site, they would find themselves stuck in the very position the Russians had been in: sitting ducks, waiting to be bombed.

So the decision was made simply to keep the island abandoned — to focus on denying it to Putin rather than setting up a whole new garrison like the one that existed before the war. Yet the Ukrainian side also knew this alone would not be enough. Some symbolic act was needed to confirm that the island was back in their hands. That is how the top-secret operation to re-raise the flag over Zmiinyi Ostriv was born.

For a mission with no purpose beyond propaganda, it was remarkably difficult to pull off. Knowing Russia would drop missiles on any units that went ashore, Ukraine’s 73rd Naval Special Purpose Center had to do nearly everything under cover of darkness. The elite of the navy’s elite, the Special Purpose Center — Ukraine’s Spetsnaz — is essentially Kyiv’s version of America’s Navy SEALs: the operators called in for the highly dangerous, highly specialized work no one else can do.

July 7: A Flag, and a Hasty Retreat

On July 7, 2022, the operation meant crossing dozens of kilometers to Snake Island on underwater vehicles, moving carefully in case the Russians had mined the waters as a parting gift. With the special forces traveled combat engineers of the 59th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade, who had perhaps the most terrifying job of all: going ashore and disabling any booby traps. It was an intense operation that began at night and concluded only when the sun was already high in the sky. It was also a success.

That day, soldiers from the Special Purpose Center were photographed raising the Ukrainian flag over Snake Island for the first time since February 24. Taken from the air, the image was not quite as spectacular as that of US Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima, but it carried as much meaning. Here, at last, was evidence that the island belonged once again to Kyiv, that Russia’s forces had been driven out and the occupation ended.

The visit could not last long. Even as they raised the flag, the soldiers were alerted to incoming Russian warships. Rather than linger, the Ukrainians retreated. As they entered the water, Russian missiles slammed into the pier, and it was only through sheer luck that the special forces returned to shore unscathed.

The Cost of a Speck of Rock

In the months since that moment, Snake Island has remained roughly where it was after the Russian retreat: back in Ukraine’s hands, but too dangerous to garrison again. In one sense, that makes its recapture look like a minor victory — a small island denied to a country that already controls the much larger Crimea. But that framing misses the point.

In the five months it held Snake Island, Russia lost almost $1 billion’s worth of equipment: the sunk Moskva, a destroyed helicopter, and multiple knocked-out air-defense systems. That is a staggering sum, and it does not even include the soldiers killed and wounded in Ukrainian drone strikes, nor the incalculable leverage lost over Odessa. Like so much of Russia’s war of aggression, the Battle for Snake Island shows how overconfidence and a lack of preparation can turn even the easiest victory into a costly defeat.

Had you told a military analyst on February 23, 2022 that Moscow would not even be able to hold Snake Island in an all-out conflict, you would have been dismissed as hopelessly naive. And yet, here we are. The war is far from over, and it is not inconceivable that Russia could retake this speck of rock at some future point.

For now, though, that looks unlikely — and for that, the wider world can be grateful. It may be one tiny piece of territory in a much larger conflict, but Snake Island has become a symbol of everything that has happened so far: of Russian blunders and Ukrainian heroism, of a Slavic David giving Goliath a well-deserved bloody nose.

Frequently Asked Questions

How big is Snake Island and why does it matter strategically?

Snake Island, or Zmiinyi Ostriv, covers a mere 0.2 km² — just under 50 acres — of barren, flat rock about 35 km from the coasts of both Ukraine and Romania. It has no deposits to mine and no fresh water. Its importance is purely positional: it sits 289 km from Crimea near the sea lanes ships must use to reach Ukraine’s grain-export ports of Odessa and Kherson, making it both a monitoring outpost and a chokepoint for keeping those ports open.

Who said “Russian warship, go f—k yourself,” and what happened to him?

The line was spoken by 31-year-old Ukrainian border guard Roman Hrybov on February 24, 2022, in response to a surrender demand radioed from the cruiser Moskva. Hrybov and 82 fellow defenders subsequently surrendered and were taken prisoner. Held through the bitter winter and subjected to cruel psychological abuse — at one point with nooses tied around their necks — they were initially declared posthumous Heroes of Ukraine before it emerged they were alive. Hrybov was eventually freed in a prisoner swap.

When and how was the cruiser Moskva sunk?

The Moskva was destroyed on April 13, 2022, making it the first Russian flagship sunk in wartime in nearly 120 years. Russia claimed a storm and an onboard fire caused an accidental detonation, but Ukraine said it struck the warship with Neptune anti-ship missiles; some accounts suggest longer-range Western weapons may have been involved. Its loss removed the air-defense umbrella that had protected the Snake Island garrison.

What role did the Bayraktar TB2 drone play in the battle?

The Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2, a Medium Altitude, Long Endurance drone armed with MAM-C smart micro-munitions, proved decisive. On May 2, TB2s destroyed two Raptor-class boats near the island; on May 6, they obliterated the garrison’s Tor air-defense system. The drones then picked off resupply boats and a troop-carrying helicopter, effectively stripping the island of protection and making Russian reinforcement suicidal.

How did Ukraine ultimately reclaim the island?

Russia abandoned the island on June 30, 2022, calling it a “gesture of goodwill.” Ukraine chose not to re-garrison it, judging any permanent force too vulnerable. Instead, on July 7, operators of the 73rd Naval Special Purpose Center, supported by combat engineers of the 59th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade, crossed by underwater vehicle at night, raised the Ukrainian flag, photographed the moment, and then withdrew under incoming Russian missile fire.

Sources

• CNN, overview of Snake Island: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/13/europe/snake-island-ukraine-strategic-war-cmd-intl/index.html
• The Insider, detailed overview: https://theins.ru/en/politics/252850
• BBC, why Russia retreated: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61992491
• Profile of the border guard behind “Russian warship, go f—k yourself”: https://english.nv.ua/nation/ukraine-border-guard-speaks-of-capture-on-snake-island-by-russia-warship-50239636.html
• Turkish drones — effect on Snake Island: https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/05/surprising-success-of-ukraines-bayraktar-tb2-the-ghost-of-snake-island/
• First aerial kill of the drones: https://www.overtdefense.com/2022/05/10/ukrainian-tb2-destroys-russian-mi-8-helicopter-on-snake-island-in-first-reported-aerial-kill/
• How the tide was turned at Snake Island: https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/07/how-ukraine-is-turning-the-tide-against-russian-navy-in-black-sea/
• How Ukrainian special forces replanted their flag: https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/07/ukrainian-navy-special-forces-spearhead-daring-snake-island-mission/
• Classical history of Snake Island: https://classicalstudies.org/scs-blog/christopher-stedman-parmenter/blog-you-will-never-visit-snake-island