Russia pulls back from Snake Island

RUSSIA has pulled back its forces from a strategically -placed Black Sea island where troops have faced relentless Ukrainian attacks – but kept up its push to encircle the last bulwark of Ukraine’s resistance in the eastern province of Luhansk.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said it withdrew its forces from Snake Island off Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa in what it described as a “goodwill gesture”.

Ukraine’s military said the Russians fled the island in two speedboats following a barrage of Ukrainian artillery and missile strikes.

Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Lt Gen Igor Konashenkov insisted that the withdrawal was intended to demonstrate that “the Russian Federation wasn’t hampering the United Nations’ efforts to establish a humanitarian corridor for taking agricultural products from the territory of Ukraine”.

Ukraine and the West have accused Russia of blockading Ukrainian ports to prevent the exports of grain, contributing to the global food crisis.

Russia has denied the accusations and claimed that Ukraine needs to remove sea mines from the Black Sea to allow safe navigation. Turkey has sought to broker a deal on unblocking grain exports from Ukraine, but the talks have dragged on without any sign of quick progress and Kyiv voicing concern that Russia could use the deal to launch an attack on Odesa.

Russia took control of the island that sits on a busy shipping lane in the opening days of the war in an apparent hope to use it to control the area and use it as a staging ground for an attack on Odesa.

The island came to epitomise resistance to the invasion when Ukrainian troops there rejected a demand from a Russian warship to surrender or face bombardment.

The funeral of Hospitallers Medical Battalion member Nataliia Frausher in Kyiv, who died in a car accident on Tuesday as a man and boy look at a crater in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, inset.