Clarke said that after Russian forces retreated from Snake Island, near the Black Sea port of Odessa, they left “missile defense batteries and one of their radars intact, which they shouldn’t have done.” That’s how the story ends, according to Clarke… “The next day, they tried to bomb their own facility, so the Ukrainians couldn’t use and dropped four bombs and missed with three of them hitting at once. Three fell into the sea. One of them fell on the island. “It’s not clear if that facility is still operational, if they actually hit what they were targeting on the island.” Clarke said the Ukrainians “probably won’t take the island by any force because anyone on Snake Island is vulnerable to some kind of attack, but certainly the Russians now don’t and it makes Odessa a little safer.” Odessa is Ukraine’s main port and has long been believed to be a key strategic target for Vladimir Putin along the southern Black Sea coast. So how did Ukraine manage to recapture the island that was seized in the first days of the invasion? Clarke explained: “It was just within range of the artillery of these new guns that the Ukrainians have – almost certainly from the French, 155mm with a special shell, which gives a little extra range. “And even though the Russians had anti-aircraft defenses and anti-missile defenses, there’s no defense against artillery shells. They’re too small and they travel too fast. And so Ukraine just bombards them with artillery on Snake Island to the point where the Russians just couldn’t stay and they left last week.” Speaking about the ongoing mission to remove grain from Ukraine, the former director of the Royal United Services Institute said an international organization like the UN could “go in and take the grain and protect the convoys going in and out”. “That’s another possibility. It’s the only way it can work. But very, very dangerous. And it would require some demining,” he added.
