Madrid/Kyiv - NATO faced rebukes from Moscow and Beijing on Thursday after it declared Russia a “direct threat” and said China posed “serious challenges” to global stability as Russian forces abandoned the strategic Black Sea outpost of Snake Island on Thursday, in a major victory for Ukraine that could loosen the grip of Russia's blockade on Ukrainian ports.
Offering a glimpse of victory, Ukraine said it had driven the Russian forces out after a massive artillery and assault overnight.
"KABOOM!" tweeted Andriy Yermak, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's chief of staff. "No Russian troops on the Snake Island anymore. Our Armed Forces did a great job."
Ukraine's southern military command posted an image on Facebook of what appeared to be the island, seen from the air, with at least five huge columns of black smoke rising above it from what it described as an assault by missiles and artillery.
"The enemy hurriedly evacuated the remains of the garrison with two speed boats and probably left the island. Currently, Snake Island is consumed by fire, explosions are bursting."
Snake Island has held the world's attention since Russia seized it on the war's first day, when a Ukrainian guard, ordered by Russia's flagship cruiser Moskva to surrender, radioed back "Russian warship: go fuck yourself".
Russia's defence ministry said it had decided to withdraw from the outcrop as a "gesture of goodwill" to show Moscow was not obstructing U.N. efforts to open a humanitarian corridor allowing grains to be shipped from Ukraine.
"The most significant aspect is that this could open the door to Ukrainian grain exports from Odesa, which is critical for Ukraine's economy and for the global food supply," tweeted Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Foreign Policy Research Institute.
During a summit in Madrid, the Western military alliance described a world plunged into a dangerous phase of big-power competition and facing myriad threats, from cyberattacks to climate change.
NATO summit wraps up
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said as the summit wrapped up Thursday that member nations agreed on a “fundamental shift in our deterrence and defense” and sent Moscow a clear message that the alliance had a firm line drawn on its eastern frontier.
“We live in a more dangerous world and we live in a more unpredictable world, and we live in a world where we have a hot war going on in Europe,” Stoltenberg said. “At the same time, we also know that this can get worse if this becomes a full scale war between Russia and NATO.”
Stoltenberg continued: “We want to remove any room for miscalculation, misunderstanding in Moscow, about our readiness to protect every inch of NATO territory. That’s NATO’s core responsibility.”
Over their three days of talks in Spain, NATO leaders formally invited Finland and Sweden to join the alliance, after overcoming opposition from Turkey. If the Nordic nations’ accession is approved by the 30 member nations, it will give NATO a new 800-mile (1,300 kilometer) border with Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned he would respond in kind if the Nordic pair allowed NATO troops and military infrastructure onto their territory. He said Russia would have to “create the same threats for the territory from which threats against us are created.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who addressed the NATO summit by video link, asked for more. He urged NATO to send modern artillery systems and other weapons and warned the leaders they either had to provide Kyiv with the help it needed or “face a delayed war between Russia and yourself.”
At the summit, NATO leaders agreed to dramatically scale up military force along the alliance’s eastern flank, where countries from Romania to the Baltic states worry about Russia’s future plans.
They announced plans to increase almost eightfold the size of the alliance’s rapid reaction force, from 40,000 to 300,000 troops, by next year. The troops will be based in their home nations but dedicated to specific countries in the east, where the alliance plans to build up stocks of equipment and ammunition.
-AP/Reuters