Radio România Internațional

Tag: Snake Island

  • June 18, 2022 UPDATE

    June 18, 2022 UPDATE

    MOLDOVA – A joint session of the Romanian and Moldovan Parliaments
    was held on Saturday in Chișinău. This is the first time such an event takes
    place. Romanian and Moldovan MPs conveyed a joint message in support of Moldova
    being granted EU candidate status. Attending the meeting was Moldova’s
    president, Maia Sandu, who expressed hope Moldova should be granted EU
    candidate status. In response to Friday’s recommendation issued by the European
    Commission, president Sandu says the candidate status will represent a
    long-expected result, and that Chișinău will rely on Bucharest’s support while
    moving forward. The future of the Republic of Moldova is in the great European
    family, and Romania is and will be Moldova’s most trusted partner, the speaker
    of the Romanian Senate, Florin Cîțu, said in turn. The speaker of the Romanian
    Chamber of Deputies, Marcel Ciolacu, also said Romania and the Republic of
    Moldova must work together to ensure better living standards for their
    citizens. At the end of the session, the president of the Moldovan Parliament,
    Igor Grosu, and the speakers of two chambers of the Romanian Parliament signed
    a joint declaration reiterating the full support of all political parties in
    Romania for the development, democratic consolidation and European integration
    of the Republic of Moldova. The document also condemns the illegal, unprovoked and
    unwarranted aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine.




    AUR – The Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) in opposition
    has condemned the actions of Moldovan authorities regarding the party leader,
    George Simion, who is also the leader of the AUR parliamentary group. George
    Simion was detained on Chișinău airport while trying to enter Moldova together
    with a delegation of the Romanian Parliament. Simion was detained after being
    banned during the mandate of the former pro-Russian president, Igor Dodon,
    accused of endangering Moldovan statehood. The ban was not lifted by the
    current pro-European administration. Simion was included on the list of the
    Romanian delegation and was not informed beforehand regarding the ban
    preventing him from entering the territory of the Republic of Moldova.
    Described as a turbulent populist by the Bucharest media, Simion has always
    advocated the unification of Romania and Moldova.




    WAR IN UKRAINE – The Russian Army has strengthened its position on Snake
    Island in the Black Sea, occupied at the start of the war, where it installed
    additional defense systems. This suggests the Russians are unwilling to give up
    this strategic point, despite the threats posed by the new Caesar and HIMARS
    artillery and missile systems received by the Ukrainian forces. Western
    military experts believe the latest open-source satellite footage of the small
    island off the Ukrainian and Romanian coast reveals anti-air systems installed
    by the Russians both on land as well as on nearby ships. The West has provided
    Ukraine with more mobile artillery systems, which in theory should allow them
    to hit Snake Island. Experts say the island has both a military and an economic
    strategic value, since whoever controls the island controls the traffic of
    civilian watercraft in the Black Sea. A former territory of Romania, annexed by
    the USSR and taken over by Ukraine in 1991, Snake Island is located in an area
    rich in oil and natural gas.




    DEATH -
    Actor Valentin Uritescu, one of the most popular actors of the last decades,
    has passed away aged 81. Over the course of his long career, he generally
    played supporting roles in scores of films and theatre plays. Five years ago he
    was awarded the lifetime achievement award at the Gopo Awards Gala. He released
    a memoirs collection entitled Take care of your good side. Memoirs.




    TENNIS -
    Romanian tennis players Sorana Cîrstea and Simona Halep are on Sunday competing
    in the semi-finals of the WTA 250 tournament in Birmingham, totaling some 250
    thousand dollars in prizes. In the first semi-final, Cîrstea will take on Shuai
    Zhang of China, the competition’s eighth seed. In the second semi-final, Simona
    Halep will go up against Beatriz Haddad Maia of Brazil. Originally slated for
    Saturday, the two matches were postponed due to heavy rain. (VP)

  • Snake Island

    Snake Island

    Snake Island reappeared in the public eye on February 25, 2022, the day after the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War. On a Friday, a Russian warship ordered the Ukrainian guard of the island to surrender, and after a brief bombardment, the island was captured. This aggression brought back into question the history of the only island in the Black Sea, its ecosystem and its anthropogenic habitation.

    Located 20 nautical miles or 44 kilometers from where the Danube flows into the Black Sea, Snake Island is a limestone rock, with no water or trees, with poor vegetation, reeds and thistle. Its name comes from the small, non-venomous water snakes that once lived here. It covers 17 hectares, from north to south it is 440 meters long and from east to west 662 meter. Due to the harsh living conditions there, the island has no permanent residents besides the border guards.The island has been used as a fishing base since ancient times. It was also called the White Island, Leuke or Achilleis, where Milesian merchants used to stop.

    In the 16th century, the island came under the control of the Ottoman Empire, and in 1829, under the Treaty of Adrianople, Russia annexed the island and in 1842 built a lighthouse there. In 1878, Romania received the island together with the Danube Delta and Dobrogea following the Berlin Peace Treaty. In 1940, after the annexation of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina by the Soviets, the island remained a Romanian territory.In 1948, after the conclusion of the Paris Peace Treaty of 1947, the Soviet Union committed its first territorial robbery after the Second World War. Under a protocol concluded on February 4, 1948 and the minutes of May 23 of the same year, Romania lost the island. It should be noted that these acts have not been ratified.

    On November 25, 1949, the Soviet Union did it again: the Danube border between Romania and the USSR was pushed to the Musura Canal, west of the mouth of the northern Chilia arm of the Danube Delta. Eduard Mezincescu was Romania’s deputy foreign minister at the time and the one who signed the ceding of the island. In 1994, he recalled the circumstances of that decision:

    In 1948, I received an order from Ana Pauker telling me that when they drew the borders after the war with the USSR, they missed Snake Island, which should have been ceded to the Soviets. Pauker, Romania’s foreign minister, said the Soviets had recently raised the issue and decided to get the island. Profir, the Minister of Public Works, and I went to Tulcea and, further, to Sulina and to the island to complete the process of handing it over. Which I did. On the island, the Soviets were represented by the ambassador, the deputy foreign minister, and military personnel. An outdoor table had been set up and the minutes were ready. We were invited to sign. I said I wanted to see first what I was supposed to hand over. So, I actually forced everybody there to take a tour the island on foot. With this whim, I delayed the signing of the document.

    In 1999, the Oral History Center of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation recorded an interview with Admiral Constatin Necula, the head of the Romanian navigation security on the Black Sea during the Second World War. He recalled:

    After August 23, 1944, when the delimitation of the Romanian-Soviet border began, I was sent to Sulina to participate, together with 2 Soviet officers, in drawing the maritime border. I went to Sulina without receiving any instructions, also because there were no specialists. I was told that the map would be drawn, I was not told about where the border would be and how this would be done. I was only told to talk to the Soviets and avoid any conflict with them. I found in Sulina the two Soviet officers who had already finished tracing the border. They had set up a beacon north of the port of Sulina, about 1-1.5 km away. They had taken the entire Delta that Chilia’s arm formed. The border went to the beacon fixed north of Sulina, and then to the east. They were careful to place the beacon in such a way that a line going east, perpendicular to the shore, passed south of Snake Island, so they could keep it. They put together a file with a map and a report that I didn’t want to sign. I told them that I was not authorized to sign any ceding of territory or to place a buoy.

    After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Snake Island became part of Ukraine. On February 3, 2009, the International Court of Justice in The Hague gave its verdict in the trial between Romania and Ukraine for the delimitation of the continental shelf of the Black Sea and of the exclusive economic zone. Romania was granted sovereign jurisdiction over an area of ​​9,700 square kilometers, or 79.34% of the disputed area, with the rest going to Ukraine. (MI)