Russian forces beat a hasty retreat from a tiny but strategic Black Sea island Thursday, potentially easing the threat to the vital Ukrainian port city of Odessa nearby. 

During its regular social media update Thursday evening, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said “the Russian occupiers” exited Snake Island “in two speedboats … unable to withstand the impact of our artillery, missile and aviation units…. The Odessa region is completely liberated.”

The exact number of Russian troops said to have fled was not disclosed. Earlier, a senior Ukrainian military official, Oleksiy Gromov, said Kyiv was planning to deploy troops to Snake Island, without specifying a timeline. “At the moment, we control [the island] with the help of our weapons: long-range artillery, rocket units and aviation,” Mr. Gromov said.

A photo posted by Ukraine’s Operation Command South on Thursday showed several plumes of thick smoke rising over the island, indicating a barrage of artillery and missile fire.

The Kremlin, however, portrayed the pullout from Snake Island as a “goodwill gesture.”  

A Russian defense ministry spokesman, Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov, said the withdrawal was intended to demonstrate that Moscow isn’t hampering UN efforts to establish a humanitarian corridor for exporting agricultural products from Ukraine.

The Kyiv Independent reported that Andriy Yermak, head of President Zelensky’s office, blasted the Russian statement as a “complete fake” and insisted that Russian troops were pushed out of the outpost as a result of a “remarkable” operation conducted by Ukraine’s armed forces.

Ukraine and the West have accused Russia of blockading Ukrainian ports to prevent exports of grain, contributing to a global food crisis. Russia has denied that and said Ukraine needs to remove mines from the Black Sea to allow safe navigation.

Turkey has sought to broker a deal to unblock grain exports. Yet the talks have dragged on, with Kyiv expressing fear that Russia will exploit the removal of the mines to attack Odessa. On Thursday, NATO’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, said that Greece is willing to provide ships to help export grain from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports under Russian blockade.

Snake Island itself sits along a busy shipping lane. Russia took control of it in the opening days of the war in the apparent hope of using it as a staging ground for an assault on Odessa.

It was unclear if the evacuation meant a change in Moscow’s designs on Ukraine’s biggest port, which is crucial for shipping grain to Africa, the Middle East. and other parts of the world. It is also the headquarters of the country’s navy.

The island — shrouded in myth since ancient times — early on took on legendary significance for Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion, when Ukrainian troops there reportedly received a demand from a Russian warship to surrender or be bombed. The answer supposedly came back, “Go [expletive] yourself.”

Ukraine has celebrated the story with patriotic fervor, issuing a postage stamp in commemoration.

The island’s Ukrainian defenders were captured by the Russians but later freed as part of a prisoner exchange. After the island was taken, the Ukrainian military bombarded the small Russian garrison there and its air defenses.

At a NATO summit at Madrid, Prime Minister Johnson billed the Russian pullout as a sign that Ukraine will prevail in the war launched by Vladimir Putin. “In the end it will prove impossible for Putin to hold down a country that will not accept” occupation, Mr. Johnson said.