Russia Says Warplane Hits Snake Island After Ukrainian Forces Raise Flag There

Russia's military said a Russian jet attacked Snake Island overnight, after Ukrainian troops claimed to have raised their flag on the strategic Black Sea outpost.

Тhe attack occurred early on July 7, “destroying” part of the Ukrainian detachment on the island, said Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov, a Defense Ministry spokesman.

"At about 5 a.m., several Ukrainian servicemen landed on the island from a motorboat and took pictures with the flag. An aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces immediately launched a strike with high-precision missiles on Snake Island, as a result of which part of the Ukrainian military personnel was destroyed," Konashenkov said in a video.

Serhiy Bratchuk, the head of the Odesa regional administration, confirmed that the island had been attacked, though did not provide details of damage or casualties.

The tiny island has strategic importance because of its proximity to the sea lanes to Ukraine's port of Odesa. But it also has symbolic importance in the nearly five months since Russia invaded Ukraine. Russian forces withdrew from it on June 30 after coming under heavy bombardment from Ukrainian artillery.

On July 7, video of three soldiers raising a large Ukrainian flag on the island was posted to several official Telegram channels, including that of Andriy Yermak, chief of staff for President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

It was unclear when the video was filmed.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, authorities again called on people in the eastern Donetsk region to flee, as Russian forces continued their slow, grinding advance that has taken more territory and taken a heavy toll on Ukrainian troops.

Ukrainian military commanders said on July 6 that they had repelled Russian advances in several locations in and around the administrative border between Luhansk and Donetsk, the two regions located in the Donbas region.

SEE ALSO: Ukraine Takes Control Of Snake Island, Fighting Rages In Lysychansk

Russia earlier this week claimed control over the entire Luhansk region, after pushing Ukrainian forces out of the cities of Lysychansk and Syevyerodonetsk. Russian commanders have then pushed further west and south, advancing toward the city of Slovyansk.

Russian President Vladimir Putin also declared the complete seizure of Luhansk.

However, Luhansk’s administration chief, Serhiy Hayday, denied that the Russians had completely captured the province, and he said there was heavy fighting in villages around Lysychansk.

“The Russians have paid a high price, but the Luhansk region is not fully captured by the Russian Army," Hayday said in a televised interview. “Some settlements have been overrun by each side several times.”

Ukrainian commanders claimed to have repelled Russian attacks on a town and village north of Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, not far from the Russian border.

Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the Donetsk military administration, urged the province's more than 350,000 remaining residents to flee earlier this week

In his nightly video address on July 6, Zelenskiy said that of all the battles in his country, “the most brutal confrontation” is raging in the Donbas. He also said that Western artillery and rocket systems were having a “very powerful” effect on the battlefield.

Russia's Defense Ministry also claimed that Russian rockets had destroyed two HIMARS multiple-launch rocket systems that the United States had supplied to Ukraine.

The Ukrainian military denied Moscow’s claims.

Russian forces made no claimed or assessed territorial gains “for the first time in 133 days of war,” according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.

“Russian forces will likely confine themselves to relatively small-scale offensive actions as they attempt to set conditions for more significant offensive operations and rebuild the combat power needed to attempt those more ambitious undertakings,” the institute said in its daily assessment on July 6.

With reporting by AP