Special forces of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) said that on the day the Ukrainian flag was raised on Zmiinyi (Snake) Island (Zmiinyi), a storm overturned a motorboat and the soldiers spent 28 hours in the open sea on a rubber boat with oars.
In early September of 2024, a journalist from The Wall Street Journal visited Zmiinyi Island and spoke with officers of the Timur special forces, an elite unit of Ukraine’s military intelligence, who took part in the recapture of the island in the summer of 2022.
According to the WSJ, the rocky sliver of land 20 miles off the coast is scarred by incessant Ukrainian attacks to retake it. In addition, the island is littered with the mangled remains of Russian military equipment and buildings that have been reduced to piles of rubble.
The island gave Ukraine a foothold in the Black Sea and threw a lifeline to the economy as billions of dollars in grain exports resumed.
“As the historical saying goes: “Whoever controls Zmiinyi Island controls the sea,”” said an officer of the Main Intelligence Directorate.
Ramses, a career soldier, and five other special forces officers from the Timur special forces unit returned to the island to ensure that Ukraine would control it.
They approached the cliff on the western side of the island in a low-slung riverboat under the cover of darkness. The four of them, led by Ramses, climbed the cliff and slowly made their way through buildings and past vehicles that had been mined by the retreating Russians. In the rain and fog, they began clearing the buildings and collecting documents that had been left behind in the rush. Ramses raised the Ukrainian flag on the island.
While the soldiers were ashore, the weather worsened. On the way back to the mainland, violent waves knocked out two of their boat’s motors and then turned it over, forcing them to transfer to an inflatable boat without a motor, only with oars.
The boat was taken out to sea, in the direction of the gas drilling rigs where Russian troops were stationed. The Ukrainian soldiers spent the night constantly scooping out water that was getting into the boat through the sides and using a pump to keep the boat inflated. They were rescued after 28 hours at sea.
Focus shifting to gas rigs east of the island
The publication recalls that the recapture of the island was also a symbolic victory for Ukraine, as on the first day of the war, when Russian warships approached and demanded that Ukrainians surrender, a border guard responded on the radio that the warships should “go and f**k themselves.”
The WSJ notes that the main battle in this part of the Black Sea is now over several gas rigs east of the island that Russia has seized. Russian forces have deployed equipment there to monitor Ukrainian forces and track missiles and drones that Kyiv uses to target the occupied Crimean peninsula.
Recently, the Timur special forces unit sent about a dozen speedboats to attack the drilling rigs. They were fired upon with machine guns, shooting down a modern Russian Su-30SM fighter jet.
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