As news broke around the world that Vladimir Putin’s tanks and helicopters had streamed across the Ukrainian border, one act of defiance stood as a glimmer of hope on an otherwise desolate day.
On February 24, 2022, as news broadcasts and timelines filled up with images of destroyed buildings and terrified people, a small group of soldiers on a seemingly irrelevant little island inspired all of Europe.
Snake Island is a remote rock in the Black Sea, some 35km east of the mouth of the Danube River it is often regarded as a marking point for Ukrainian territorial waters – as such populated by just 13 border guards.
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As the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, the Moskva, trained its huge gun on the island, it transmitted a simple message to Snake Island’s defenders: “Snake Island, I, Russian warship, repeat the offer: put down your arms and surrender, or you will be bombed. Have you understood me? Do you copy?"
The interaction was filmed by one of the men on the island and posted on social media and soon went viral.
As the missile cruiser, thought to be worth around £623million and teeming with some of the most high-tech killing equipment on the planet, trained its weapons on the 13 they stopped to have a quick chat.
"That's it, then,” one of the guards, believed to be called Roman Hrybov, can be heard saying. “Or, do we need to f**k them back off?"
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"Might as well,” says his comrade.
Then, uttering a sentence that would go on define Ukraine’s resistance in the face of a far larger enemy, Hrybov says back over the radio: “Russian warship, go f**k yourself."
Those five words reverberated around an otherwise terrified world, pulling the people of Ukraine together and billions beyond in behind them.
Initial reports claimed that the soldiers had been killed by the Moskva, the first true martyrs of the war that would go on to last a year to the time of writing.
The world mourned their loss but their actions became a symbol of resistance and hope, one still carried forward across the front lines of the war a year on.
The phrase became a slogan – it appeared all around the internet, on t-shirts, novelty mugs and in graffiti on streets around the world – In the USA, abakermade cookies with it on.
In Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would even go on to say the men would be posthumously awarded the nation’s highest honour – the Order of Ukraine.
But as time went on and the dust of the first days of war began to settle, whispers started circulating around social channels that the men hadn’t been killed but rather captured by the Russian navy.
A month later and many of the men, including Hrybov, were returned to Ukraine.
An image of Hrybov receiving an honour was later posted by the Ukrainian government-run Twitter account Defence of Ukraine saying: “Roman Hrybov, the author of the famous 'Russian Warship, Go F*** Yourself' phrase, returned from Russian captivity to his native Cherkasy region. Glory to the Hero!”
US Senator Ben Sasse would later describe the line as “the rallying cry of the Ukrainian resistance".
The cultural significance of the sentence is huge, a symbol of defiance in a situation wrestled back from what was once the seemingly impossible.
A week after it was discovered the Snake Island men were still alive, The Washington Post wrote "Ukraine is fighting back, one swear word at a time".
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