On June 30, 2022, Russia withdrew its forces from Snake Island in the northwestern part
of the Black Sea.
The island itself is tiny, less than a fifth of a square kilometer in area.
It is of no direct value, and yet there has been a great deal of discussion about why
this was such an important moment in the war.
So what is Russia really up to here?
Well, let’s get into it.
To give you a better idea of just how worthless it is in terms of direct value, let’s go
back to a debate from the early 2000s on whether it actually is an island.
If you asked Ukraine, the answer is yes.
If you asked Romania, the answer is no.
It was just a rock.
The distinction between an island and a rock would seem to be irrelevant.
However, as Russia is keenly aware of today, there are oil deposits in the Black Sea.
Who is entitled to those depends on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,
which defines each country’s exclusive economic zone.
And for the purposes of defining a continental shelf, that law differentiates between an
island and a rock.
In 2009, the International Court of Justice delivered a ruling on the nature of Snake
Island.
Ukraine had submitted the blue claim.
Romania had submitted the red claim.
The Court punted on whether it is an island or a rock and just drew this line on the map
instead.
Evidently, they are a fan of this channel.
This is something that international arbitration can help with.
If they issue a ruling that roughly matches the expected outcome of a conflict, neither
side has an incentive to choose war instead.
After all, Ukraine would lose some value through the costs of war, which the space between
the purple and light blue line might represent.
Likewise, Romania might lose some value through the costs of war, which the space between
the purple and dark blue line might represent.
The gap between the blue lines meant that the court didn’t even have to get it exactly
right to still convince both sides to end the dispute.
But like any other peace agreement, it did not make as much headline news as an actual
war would.
As a result, it faded into obscurity.
Fast forward to the current war.
Yes, annexing the island would give Russia some sort of legal claim to the oil deposits.
But no one would recognize it.
Instead, the more pressing issue is the immediate strategic benefit of using the island
for the broader war campaign.
Russia has controlled Crimea since 2014.
At the beginning of this war, Russia made a play to land lock Ukraine.
Drawing a line from Sevastopol to Ukraine’s southwest maritime border puts Snake Island
right on it.
Controlling the island is therefore useful if Russia wanted to blockade and then take
Ukraine’s most important port city: Odessa.
It would also allow Russia to connect to Transdniestria, another Russian-loyal separatist region.
From Snake Island, Russia could control the northern Black Sea: resupplying blockading
ships, establishing anti-aircraft defense systems, and even using it as an unsinkable
aircraft carrier for helicopters.
As such, if Ukraine could keep ahold of it, the expected outcome of war might look something
like this.
But if Russia could take it, then all of southern Ukraine might fall to Russian forces as a
result.
Thus, Snake Island was unsurprisingly a target on the very first day of the war.
The initial attack became infamous.
As the Black Sea Fleet flagship the Moskva approached,
Russians radioed the Ukrainian installation demanding their surrender.
Ukrainian soldiers told them to “get lost”.
Except “get lost” is the polite way to describe it.
The more popular translation is…well, I’ll just let this actual Ukrainian stamp tell
you the story.
The Ukrainian soldiers created a meme but were ultimately outnumbered.
Russia took the post in a few hours.
However, recognizing its strategic importance, Ukraine refused to let it go.
For the next four months, Ukraine mounted an endless bombardment of missile, artillery,
and drone strikes to take it back.
The most well-known consequence of this was what happened with the Moskva.
It indeed “got lost” on April 14 on the bottom of the Black Sea, apparently the result
of damage sustained from a missile.
For the ships that remained, Ukraine’s long-range strikes forced them to pull back, leaving
Snake Island with less defensive capabilities.
A month and a half later, Russia simply decided to withdraw from the island in what they described
as a “gesture of goodwill”.
This is a pivotal moment for the war.
The conflict began as a three-front assault on Ukraine:
one group going after the Ukrainian capital Kyiv,
one group expanding control over the separatist regions in the Donbas,
and one group in the south.
The Kyiv assault proved costly and ultimately went nowhere, with Russian forces withdrawing
by early April.
The east has been favorable for Russia.
In early July, Russian forces captured all of Luhansk
and have extended eastward into a couple of other oblasts.
Meanwhile, Russia gained control of Mariupol in the middle of May,
sealing off the southern tier of the Donetsk separatist republic in the process.
These battles have been costly for Russia but nevertheless represent tangible gains.
The south has proven to be the wildcard.
Russia has succeeded in closing the Crimean land bridge going toward the east.
Forces also crossed the Dnipro River and took control of Kherson.
But Odessa has hardly been threatened.
And by ceding Snake Island, Russia has made capture of that city one step harder to achieve.
This gives hope for some relief regarding a more global problem.
Ukraine’s flag represents a blue sky rising above a grain field.
The symbolism is spot on: pre-war, Ukraine produced about 24.9 million metric tons of
wheat per year, eighth-most in the world.
China, India, and Pakistan all have enormous populations, though, and export little of
that yield.
Ukraine, with a population of only 44 million people exports a disproportionate amount of
its crop, and ranks fifth overall in exports at 18 million metric tons.
Unfortunately, the war has ground that export to a halt.
As I discuss in my book “What Caused the Russia-Ukraine War”, this may be part of
Russia’s motivation for fighting.
Returning to the stats, Russia produces the third most wheat in the world.
And with a medium-sized population of 144 million people, it can export more than any
other country at 37.2 million metric tons.
Russia stood to gain from the instability.
On the eve of the war, a bushel of wheat traded at $795.
Two weeks later, it was up about $450.
That’s some serious profit for Russia harvesters.
The markets correctly anticipated the shock to the system.
With Russia blockading Ukrainian ports, those exports have had nowhere to go.
Under normal circumstances, the bulk of the wheat would go to the Middle East and North
Africa.
But with the blockade in place, the best Ukraine can do is to try shipping it on land to Romania,
and then put it on a boat beyond the Russian blockade.
Alternatively, to bypass the Black Sea altogether, they can send it deeper into Europe for shipment
on the Mediterranean.
However, as if world history was playing some big joke on Ukraine,
the Soviet Union put down “Russian gauge” rail tracks all over the country.
Romania and everyone else to the west is on “standard gauge”.
The difference is only 3.5 inches, but that is more than enough to make Soviet
tracks incompatible with European ones.
This means that Ukraine can’t simply send wheat over by rail.
They can get it to the border, but then they have to jump through a hoop to keep it going
to the final destination.
Best case scenario, this increases the cost of transit.
Worst case scenario, it means a wasted crop and more lost money.
Trucks and trains simply cannot replace the enormous loads that ships would previously
bear.
And if the covid 19 pandemic taught us anything about world trade, it’s that logistics transitions
can take a long time.
That is bad news for everyone in the region.
Just look at the satellite images: Ukraine is friendly to mass agriculture; the
Middle East and North Africa are not.
Meanwhile, their geographic isolation from alternative agricultural hubs makes it difficult
for other regions to substitute for Ukraine’s shortfall.
Summing it all up, this is a giant recipe for political instability in the region.
The last time we saw that was 2011 and the Arab Spring.
There were uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt,
Yemen, Libya,
and Syria.
Some of those are still in a state of civil war a decade later.
This led to mass migration into Europe and a healthy amount of social instability.
If that were to happen again, Putin would hardly shed a tear.
And that is where the speculation of Putin’s true motives comes into play.
When Russia withdrew from Snake Island in the “gesture of goodwill”, it came along
with a declaration that Russia did not want to interfere with the grain trade.
But here’s the problem: the Russian blockade is not the only barrier to resuming shipments.
Ukraine has also mined its own ports to prevent Russian troops from landing anywhere near
Odessa.
Visualizing the problem, Russia’s abandonment of Snake Island has
shifted the balance of power favorably to Ukraine, perhaps like this.
But if that induces Ukraine to demine its ports,
it will shift power back in Russia’s favor.
If the demining shift would be larger than the Snake Island shift, then Russia would
have an incentive to engage in some sort of deception.
In turn, Ukraine would have to think long and hard about whether demining is a good
idea.
On the other hand, if demining has a smaller effect than the exchange of Snake Island,
then Ukraine can infer Russia’s intent is to abandon its southwestern aims.
From there, Ukraine can reopen its grain silos.
This should also give Ukraine pause if Snake Island was a lost cause anyway, and so the
shift from Russia leaving was tiny to begin with.
What do you think Russia is up to?
Let me know in the comments.
And if you want to know more about how the wheat problem connects to the outbreak of
the war, check out my new book “What Caused the Russia-Ukraine War”—it’s 42,000
words on that exact subject.
And if you enjoyed this video, please like, share, and subscribe, and I will see you next
time.
Take care.