KYIV, Ukraine – The Ukrainian military has accused Russia of dropping incendiary white phosphorus on Snake Island on Friday, the day after Moscow forces withdrew from the strategic rock in the southwestern Black Sea, which held the key is part of the Kremlin’s war goals.
Control of the island, a small patch of land 20 miles off the coast of Odessa that played an outrageous role throughout the war, is vital to control of the Black Sea, including major shipping routes. Some observers speculated that the strike was an action by Russia to destroy equipment it had left behind on the island so that it would not fall into Ukrainian hands.
Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister who heads the Center for Defense Strategies, a think tank in Kiev, described the attacks on Saturday as “weird” because, according to a video released by the Ukrainian military, he said it was seemed that “most of the shots were missed.”
He also said the use of white phosphorus seemed strange, as Ukrainian personnel were not believed to be on Snake Island at the time of the attack. He said he believed Russia attacked the island “to complicate any Ukrainian presence there”.
White phosphorus, which produces a thick white smoke and has a garlic-like odor, can melt deep into the meat when the phosphorus gets on the skin, causing severe burns. Though controversial, it is not considered a chemical weapon as it causes damage from high temperature combustion rather than toxic properties.
Although Russia’s defense ministry said its forces had withdrawn from Snake Island in a “goodwill gesture,” the withdrawal came after continued Ukrainian attacks — including with powerful, newly arrived Western weapons — on the island and on ships that the.
On Saturday morning, Ukraine’s top military official, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, said two missions of Russian Su-30 fighter jets flying from the Crimean peninsula the previous day had dropped phosphorus bombs over the island, known in Ukrainian as Zmiiny. “The leadership of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation does not even adhere to its own statements, which are a ‘goodwill gesture’,” General Zaluzhnyi wrote on the Telegram social media app.
Ukraine has also described the Russian missile strikes, which killed at least 21 people on Friday in the Odessa region of southern Ukraine, as “retaliation” for Russia’s retreat from Snake Island. “This was revenge for the successful liberation of Snake Island,” Yevhen Yenin, the first deputy secretary of the interior, said in an interview with DailyExpertNews on Friday.
The Ukrainians have accused Russia of using white phosphorus bombs during the war.
In April, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of using phosphorus bombs “against residential areas and civilian infrastructure.” And in mid-May, images of what was believed to be white phosphorus circulated in the sky over the Azovstal steel mill in the port city of Mariupol, during the final weeks of battles as the Russian army tried to force soldiers at the plant to surrender. None of these claims have been independently verified.
White phosphorus munitions are considered legitimate when used to mask troop movements and mark targets, but their use can violate international law when targeting civilian areas.
Victoria Kim and Roger Cohen reporting contributed.