Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Snake Island in the Black Sea, where Kiev won a major victory at the start of the war with Russia, which today enters its 500th day.

“Today we are on Snake Island, which the conqueror will never understand, like the rest of Ukraine, because we are the country of the brave,” Zelensky said in an undated video posted on social media today. “I want to thank from here, from the place of victory, each of our soldiers for these 500 days,” Zelensky said in this video, in which he is seen arriving by boat on the island and laying flowers at a memorial.

Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the Russian army captured this island, which is strategically located a few tens of kilometers from the coast and where a small group of Ukrainian soldiers was located. The Russian cruiser Moskva asked them to surrender but the soldiers refused, radioing “To Russian ship: come on”; an incident captured on a Ukrainian postage stamp. The Ukrainian soldiers were eventually captured and later exchanged for Russian prisoners. The cruiser Moskva sank in the Black Sea after being hit, according to Kiev, by Ukrainian missiles. Moscow had reported only one explosion on the ship but was eventually forced to leave the island in June 2022.