Snake Island Movements - 02/06 and 04/06

Snake Island Naval Movements

two new satellite images on Snake Island. They were posted online today, but the date given on the source is 02/06 and 04/06 They don’t show too much of interest. They aren’t clear enough or close enough to look at the military buildup and identify SAM sites or if any new equipment is there. But, if you look at the dock—the floating crane that has been ever present for a while has gone. This could be 1 of two things

1 – It is currently offloading the Sevelod Bobrov transport ship
2 – It’s mission around Snake Island is complete—we know it was involved with unloading the Sevelod Bobrov and also recovering the sunk Serna-Class ship. So it could be that Russia has decided there is enough equipment on Snake Island for the current purpose of air defence.

Also present near the dock is a small boat—this could be a landing craft or a patrol boat—possible a raptor.

The second image, from the same day, shows two small craft carrying out a hard turn. Rapidly changing course. It looks like they’ve spotted a drone of some sort in the area.

Finally, image 3 is this from 4/6/2022.

Again, note the absennce of the floating crane. I think this seems to confirm that its operation near Snake Island is over. And, of course, there is the cloud of smoke from near the dock. We will come to that in just a moment but first, looking to the bottom, note that there are a number of small craft, sailing close to the island. Possible patrol boats?

Going back to the smoke, if we look at this map from May 28, where the smoke is coming from, there were three vehicles parked. So that makes the plume of smoke quite interesting.