KYIV, June 30 (Reuters) – Russian forces have withdrawn from Snake Island off Ukraine’s coast, a major strategic success for Ukraine that could help ease Moscow’s blockade of seaports Black, especially Odessa.
The Russian Minister of Defense has presented this withdrawal as a “gesture of goodwill” demonstrating according to him that Moscow does not seek to hinder the efforts of the UN to set up a humanitarian corridor in order to resume Ukrainian wheat exports.
The Ukrainian authorities have for their part assured that the Russian forces had been driven from the island by a massive artillery barrage, thanks in particular to equipment recently provided by Western countries, such as French Caesar cannons and American multiple rocket launchers. HIMARS.
“KABOOM! No more Russian troops on Serpents’ Island. Our armed forces have done an excellent job,” wrote Andriy Yermak, head of the office of Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky, on Twitter.
The Ukrainian Army’s Southern Command released photos of columns of smoke rising above the island.
“The enemy has evacuated the rest of the garrison in two speedboats and has probably abandoned the island. Serpents’ Island is currently open to flames and explosions”, he said, promising that the Ukrainian army would regain a foothold there as soon as possible.
Reuters was unable to immediately verify the Ukrainian and Russian stories.
Lifting the blockade of the port of Odessa is a major challenge for Ukraine and its Western allies.
If the departure of Russian forces from Serpents’ Island will not be enough to guarantee the safety of ships that would like to go to the Ukrainian port, experts say, it significantly reduces Moscow’s military hold in the region.
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“It’s a big victory because it ends the domination of the (Russian) Black Sea Fleet,” said Oleg Zhdanov, a military expert based in Kyiv.
The Russian army had been in a precarious position since seizing Serpents’ Island. She lost several supply ships there as well as much of the equipment she had deployed.
But according to the Ukrainian army, the arrival of modern equipment supplied by NATO member countries, including French long-range Caesar guns, has made the Russian position untenable.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who confirmed at the NATO summit which ended on Thursday in Madrid the dispatch of six additional guns to Ukraine, in addition to the twelve already delivered, said to see it as a concrete result of the support of France, while its commitment alongside Ukraine is regularly questioned.
“What is clear, if some doubted it, is that France’s support for the Ukrainian armies is a support that does not only pass through verbal commitments but also through the deployment of equipment on the spot which has always been accompanied by effective training and above all rapid deployment,” Emmanuel Macron said during a press conference at the end of the summit in Spain.
“Caesar guns (…) are, I believe, part of the appreciated equipment of the Ukrainian armies and part of the credible equipment also given their range and their efficiency”, he added.
(Report by Max Hunder and Tom Balmforth Kyiv, with the Madrid office and Bertrand Boucey Paris; French version Alize Degorce and Tangi Salan, told by Sophie Louet)