On day one of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, February 24, Russian troops seized Snake Island, a tiny rocky outcrop south-west of Odesa which – before the war – played host to a marine research station and a lighthouse. Resistance to the Russian assault became a propaganda coup for Ukrainians. The defenders gave a Russian warship the finger and sent the message: “go fuck yourself” – something that became shorthand for the defiant Ukrainian resistance. It is now reported that the Russians have been forced to withdraw, a serious strategic and propaganda coup for Ukraine.
I mention this because, in last week’s Recap, we featured a story from Basil Germond, a maritime power expert from the University of Lancaster, who pointed to the strategic importance of the island and predicted that Russia’s increasing impotence in terms of naval power is likely to become its undoing. It looks as if we may be seeing this theory playing out in real-time. More about this in next week’s newsletter.
While Russia’s grind through the Donbas region continues, leaving grieving relatives and homeless families in its wake, most of the headlines this week have concerned the diplomatic front, where some important decisions taken by world leaders at summits of the EU, the G7 and Nato will reorder global security in response to Russia’s aggression and China’s increasingly assertive economic and military posturing.
