Ukraine video shows battles for gas platforms near Snake Island
Newly-released footage appears to show Ukrainian forces battling Russian troops close to a strategic Black Sea outpost west of Crimea that has long been a target for Kyiv and Moscow.
The clip, published on Saturday by Ukraine’s state border guard, purports to show its fighters—along with Kyiv’s military intelligence agency—seizing gas production platforms around the Black Sea outpost of Snake Island from Russian control.
Moscow’s soldiers had targeted Snake Island, also known as Zmiinyi Island, in the first hours of the invasion effort beginning on February 24, 2022.
It sits close to Romania in the northwestern Black Sea, where Ukraine has been able to successfully threaten Russia’s naval fleet that operates partly out of its Crimean Sevastopol base on the western edge of the annexed peninsula.
The video appears to show a nighttime operation, with Ukrainian soldiers traveling by boat before firing into the darkness. What appears to be a gas production platform then ignites, before the video cuts to a clip of the platform burning in the daylight.
Newsweek could not independently verify the video, and is it not clear when it was filmed. Ukrainian outlet Ukrainska Pravda reported that the footage was filmed in summer 2024, but did not go into further detail.
The Ukrainian border service has been contacted via email for additional comment.
AP Photo/Michael Shtekel
Ukraine reclaimed the outpost in June 2022 after Russia said it was withdrawing from the island as a gesture of “goodwill.”
Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency, has previously described Snake Island as strategically key for civilian, trade and military reasons. The tiny island is vital for shipping routes in and out of the Black Sea, located roughly south of the Ukrainian port city of Odesa.
“With titanic efforts, we have captured and taken control of some of these strategically important facilities, which serve as our sea fortresses,” the border service said in a brief caption posted to social media on Saturday. “Their retention allows us to control a significant part of the water area and strengthen our defense.”
In June 2024, Ukraine’s SBU security service published bodycam footage of what it called a “unique and extremely important operation” made up of “several stages” on Snake Island two years earlier.
Russia had captured a series of gas drilling platforms from Ukraine shortly after it annexed Crimea in 2014. Kyiv said in September 2023 it had retaken the platforms, also known as the Boyko Towers.
In August 2023, the British government described the oil and gas towers in the northwestern Black Sea, much like Snake Island, as military outposts, providing helicopter landing sites and bases for long-range missile systems.
