Chaos and panic among the russians, which arose as a result of the active actions of the Security and Defence Forces of Ukraine on Zmiinyi Island, forced the enemy to abandon many weapons, military equipment and documents that are valuable for Ukraine’s military intelligence on the Island.

This was said by the Chief of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine Kyrylo Budanov in an interview with “Special Operation ‘Zmiinyi’” project on YouTube channel ‘Ramina’.

“These abandoned documentations helped us a lot in some matters, especially the documentations of the air defence units, particularly the technical documentations. Many rare circuit boards, which Ukraine is looking for all over the world, were removed from russian equipment. We took control panels of UAV complexes, a lot of communication systems of various types and weapons,” Kyrylo Budanov told.

According to the Chief of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, the operation on liberation of Zmiinyi Island was started planning in mid-March of 2022. It lasted for several stages.

“The russians acted quite professionally. This prevented us to completely knock them out of the entire island at first. At the time of landing, we controlled about 50% of the Island, and they controlled 50%. They had a problem to evacuate wounded servicemen, we too. They called for helicopters. Our retreated with wounded servicemen. We objectively did not have enough strength to push them at that moment,” the DIU Chief explained.

“At the first stage, the operation can be considered partially successful, because it destroyed the plans of the russians regarding activities on Zmiinyi Island. They chaotically began to try to redeploy reserves there, to bring them up by boats. Bayraktars sank them,” Kyrylo Budanov said.

He added that the important role in the liberation of the Island was played by that fact that Ukraine had received weapons, capable of inflicting fire damage on Zmiinyi Island without employment of aviation as well as the destruction of fleet flagship of the russian black sea fleet.

“If the cruiser ‘moskva’ had not been destroyed, the operation [to liberate Zmiinyi] would have been carried out, but the cruiser could come up to the range of artillery fire, and as much ammunition as it had, it would strike this island from the artillery,” Kyrylo Budanov noted.