Smoke rises from Snake Island in this satellite image taken on June 29. Photo: Planet Labs Pbc/Reuters The fight for Snake Island has strategic value, but more importantly it is of national importance to all Ukrainians, especially in their country’s darkest hour, with its back against the wall in Donbas. However, in the tiny fishing village of Vylkove, on the Ukrainian side of the Danube River and the closest residential area to the island, the battle to regain control of this outflow has turned residents’ lives upside down. Intense fighting on the island between Russian and Ukrainian forces, which began on the first day of the war, has shaken villagers’ homes, in some cases opening cracks in their walls. At Vylkove, 31 miles from Snake Island, shock waves from offshore explosions, with nothing to absorb them, have reached the shoreline. Yuri Suslov, 43, has been fishing in the waters of the Black Sea since he was a boy. “This is a very quiet town, so when they started shelling Snake Island it was very loud around here,” he said. Yuri Suslov, 43: “It’s a scary situation, but I don’t think the Russians will attack us.” Photo: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian Yuri knows Vilkov’s channels like the back of his hand. With his boat, he navigates the narrow waterways that in the summer months resemble those of Vietnam or Cambodia. Reeds and stilt houses line the river’s edge as children play in the water. Every family in Vylkove has a boat, the town’s main means of transportation. Today, the waterways of Vylkove flowing into the mouth of the Danube, giving access to the Black Sea in the direction of Snake Island, are blocked by military checkpoints, with the coast patrolled day and night. “It’s a scary situation, but I don’t think the Russians will attack us,” Yuri said. “You know why? Because we are very close to Romania, and if they accidentally hit Romania, it will be a NATO war.” Svitlana, 34, a tour guide in Vylkove, said: “It was horrible. Airplanes were flying over our heads and the explosions were very loud. Some windows cracked in older houses with wooden frames.’ Vylkove is known as Ukrainian Venice because of its water canals. Photo: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian The town survives almost entirely on fishing. Photo: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian But worse than the explosions was the economic impact of the battle for Snake Island. Due to the conflict, fishing is prohibited – a nightmare for a city known as the “Ukrainian Venice” that survives almost exclusively on fishing. “This town belongs to the fishermen and they weren’t even allowed to set sail,” said Svitlana. “And fishing is their main source of income, so they suffered great economic losses. In addition, almost 25% of the residents of the area were engaged in tourism. Some offered boat rides, some had small tourism businesses, some worked as tour guides. And now it’s impossible. As a result, about 80% of local people who were involved in marine tourism or fishing are suffering. My husband was fishing. And now we’re out of business. We have no income.” Snake Island, in the administrative division of Vylkove, gained international attention in February when Russia first seized it after a Ukrainian soldier stationed on the island told an attacking Russian warship: “Go fuck yourself.” The phrase has become one of the most popular Ukrainian resistance slogans, with the Ukrainian postal service issuing a stamp showing a Ukrainian soldier giving the finger to the Russian cruiser Moskva, which was later sunk. Since Russia took control, Ukrainian troops have tried to retake the island several times. The image of a Ukrainian soldier giving the finger to a Russian warship off Snake Island has become a symbol of resistance. Photo: Oleg Petrasyuk/EPAP Stamps issued to commemorate the defiance of Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island. Photo: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian Despite the uncertainty of Snake Island’s future, it is closely connected to Vylkove and its inhabitants. But very few people have been able to visit it, partly because of the ongoing territorial dispute between Ukraine and Romania over who is its legal “owner”. “There were no official tourists on Snake Island,” Svitlana said. “You could get a permit from the border guards and go there, but frankly it was quite complicated and expensive.” The only people authorized to visit the island were military personnel on patrol, researchers and a handful of lucky divers who regularly explored the area to admire the 49 species of fish that inhabited the waters and the wrecks of military vehicles and vessels, such as the Soviet submarine “Pike”. located at a depth of 35 meters, a reminder that this place was a regular theater of war. Vladlen Tobak, a diving instructor and founder of a diving school in Odessa, said he couldn’t count how many times he had been to the island. “There was one time I spent an entire season there with a crew of scientists. It is probably the best diving spot in Ukraine. There is a huge number of sunken objects, so the shipwreck is #1 in Ukraine. There are some outstanding discoveries – for example, there is a galley, or as we call it “amphora carrier”, fourth century BC, over 3,000 amphorae. And now historians are really worried about the fate of this object.” Today the sea around Snake Island is contaminated by thousands of mines dropped by the Russians, a problem that many believe will further hinder the return to normality at Vylkove, even if for now Snake Island is back in Ukrainian hands . A Ukrainian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said authorities were working on a demining plan using robots, but it would be months before it was operational. A closed beach in Odessa. The coastal city is subject to periodic shelling by Russian forces. Photo: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian Russia claimed it had withdrawn from the island as a “gesture of goodwill” to show it was not obstructing UN efforts to open a humanitarian corridor to allow grain to be transported from Ukraine. A Russian military attack on Friday in the town of Serhiivka, near Odessa, was interpreted by Ukrainian authorities as payback for Russian troops forced off Snake Island the previous day. At least 21 people, including two children, were killed when two Russian missiles hit an apartment building and a recreation center. Ukrainian firefighters clear the debris on July 2 after Russian forces bombed an apartment building in Serhiivka, southwest of Odesa. Photo: Maxim Penko/AP The strategic importance of Snake Island lies not only in its proximity to the mouth of the Danube, a position that turns the small piece of land into a natural fortress to prevent the enemy from reaching the second largest river in Europe and an important trade hub, but also in the fact that its control entails the possession of a military stronghold on the Black Sea. An adviser to Ukraine’s interior ministry, Vadym Denysenko, told Ukrainian television that the recapture of Snake Island was a “huge victory.” He said that after Ukraine destroyed the Russian warship Moskva, the Russians wanted to turn Snake Island into an air defense hub and use it to control the entire western part of the Black Sea and launch a land invasion. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST “Now the Russians cannot do anything in this area of ​​the sea, except, unfortunately, to bomb Ukrainian cities with missiles from their ships,” Denisenko said. In Vylkove, people are well aware that their fate is tied to that of Snake Island, and that Ukraine won that battle – but not the war. “A lot of people think that Snake Island is just a useless rock in the middle of the sea,” Svitlana said. “But we who live here, a few miles away, know very well that this is not the case. And for months we have been paying the price of our proximity to the island. We know that until the war is over, the Russians will try to take it back.”