Snake Island (Black Sea)
Snake Island, also known as Serpent Island or Zmiinyi Island (Ukrainian: Острів Зміїний, romanized: Ostriv Zmiinyi; Romanian: Insula Șerpilor; Russian: Змеиный, romanized: Zmeinyy), is an island belonging to Ukraine located in the Black Sea, near the Danube Delta, with an important role in delimiting Ukrainian territorial waters.
The island has been known since classical antiquity, and during that era hosted a Greek temple to Achilles.[1]
The island is populated, reported to have under 30 people in 2012. A village, Bile, was founded in February 2007 with the purpose of consolidating the status of the island as an inhabited place. This happened during the period in which the island was part of a border dispute between Romania and Ukraine from 2004 to 2009, during which Romania contested the technical definition of the island and borders around it. The territorial limits of the continental shelf around Snake Island were delineated by the International Court of Justice in 2009,[2] providing Romania with almost 80% of the disputed maritime territory.[3]
On 24 February 2022, two Russian navy warships attacked and captured Snake Island.[4]
Contents
1 Geography
2 Population and infrastructure
2.1 Lighthouse
3 History and mythology
3.1 Modern history
3.1.1 World War I
3.1.2 Interwar period
3.1.3 World War II
3.1.4 Postwar history
3.1.5 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
4 Maritime delimitation
5 See also
6 References and footnotes
6.1 Inline
6.2 General
7 Further reading
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_Island_(Black_Sea)