Ukraine’s Drones Are Peeling Back Russian Defenses On Infamous Snake Island

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.

The Ukrainian military can’t easily retake Snake Island—at least not yet—but it already is on its way to rendering the island useless to the Russian fleet, if not transforming it from an asset into a liability for the occupiers.

The Russian assault on Snake Island galvanized Ukraine’s resistance. Early rumors indicated the entire Ukrainian garrison died in the naval bombardment. That turned out to be untrue—Moscow in late March traded the Ukrainian troops for captive Russians.

But the Snake Island defenders’ defiance by then had become legend. A postage stamp commemorating the infamous radio message was a hot seller in Ukraine and a collector’s item abroad.

The legend perhaps began to feel prophetic as Ukraine slowly turned the tide of the war. In late March, Russia’s over-extended, under-supplied troops collapsed along their northern axis of advance toward Kyiv.

A month later, the Kremlin tried to organize a new offensive along the eastern front in the Donbas region. But it, too, quickly faltered as the Ukrainians staged a fighting withdrawal from a few ruined hamlets. Farther north near Kharkiv, a Ukrainian counteroffensive pushed back fragile Russian forces.

The Russians have fared better in the southern sector, where they continue to hold the ports of Mariupol, Berdyansk and Kherson. But the adjacent naval campaign has proved ruinous for the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

On March 24, an Alligator-class landing ship belonging to the fleet’s reinforced amphibious flotilla burst into flames while pier-side in Russian-occupied Berdyansk in southern Ukraine. It seems an accurate hit by a Ukrainian army Tochka ballistic missile started the chain reaction.

Three weeks later on April 13, two Ukrainian navy Neptune anti-ship missiles holed the 612-foot missile cruiser Moskva, the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet with its, at the time, two dozen or so major warships. The Ukrainians also have damaged or sank three Russian patrol boats.

The most recent naval strikes hint at a broader Ukrainian counteroffensive in the direction of Snake Island. On Monday, a TB-2 armed drone apparently belonging to the Ukrainian sea service struck two Russian Raptor-class patrol boats with laser-guided missiles, heavily damaging if not destroying both of the 55-foot, gun-armed boats.

At the time of the drone strike, the Raptors were patrolling “near” Snake Island, the Ukrainian defense ministry claimed. That makes them respectively the fourth and fifth Russian target Kyiv’s TB-2s have struck on or around Snake Island in just the last week.

The Ukrainian defense ministry has released footage depicting separate drone strikes on April 30, one each targeting a Strela-10 short-range surface-to-air missile launcher and a ZU-23-2 towed anti-aircraft gun. The Ukrainians are taking apart the air-defense network the Russians hastily built on Snake Island.

The defense-suppression effort is consistent with Ukraine’s campaign plan, arguably beginning with the sinking of Moskva three weeks ago. The cruiser actually was the linchpin of Russian air-defenses in the Black Sea. Her loss, along with her 64 S-300 long-range SAMs, was a big blow to Russia’s ability to control the sky over Snake Island.

It’s clearly no accident that, after Moskva settled on the seafloor, Ukraine’s drones began pushing farther south. Now the drone operators are making their own job easier by destroying the short-range defenses on Snake Island. Expect the drones to target the main garrison next.

Don’t expect the Ukrainian marine corps to storm Snake Island anytime soon. The marines are busy fighting on land around Kherson and in the wreckage of the Azovstol steel plant in occupied Mariupol.

Even if they weren’t already engaged on land, the marines don’t have an obvious way of getting to Snake Island. Russia, despite its losses, still controls the sea—if not the air—south of Odessa. The Ukrainian navy’s sole landing ship, the 240-foot Yuri Olefirenko, reportedly was in Berdyansk when Russian forces overran the city.

Conditions could change. If Ukrainian forces can sink more Russian ships and further degrade the Snake Island garrison, a helicopter assault from Odessa might be possible. Or marines might hitch a ride on a civilian vessel.

For now, however, it’s probably sufficient for Kyiv to threaten Snake Island’s occupiers. As long as Russia has a garrison on the island, it must supply it. Every ship that sails toward the island is a potential target for Ukrainian drone crews who operate with growing fearlessness over the Black Sea.