Hotskiy says that he and his colleagues hoped there would not be a conflict but prepared for one anyway. There were accommodation blocks, a radio station, a pier and a museum containing old Greek stones and seascape paintings. The guards lived in a dormitory with showers and a kitchen it had a library with books by Jack London, author of The Call of the Wild. Plus sheep, dogs, feral cats and seagulls, as well as dolphins out on the waves. Its population increased from 30 to 80, and included the frontier servicemen, two handymen and a new contingent of 50 infantry soldiers. He dropped in twice by helicopter and instructed his military intelligence service to bolster the island’s defences. So great was the concern that Ukraine’s actor turned president Volodymyr Zelenskiy came to see for himself. It regularly closed off large maritime zones on the grounds that it was conducting naval exercises. Since annexing the Crimean peninsula in 2014, Moscow had militarised the Black Sea and steadily reduced access for Ukrainian ships. It was evident the island – 185 miles west of occupied Crimea – would be hard to defend in the event of a full-scale Russian attack. Vladimir Putin had sent armoured vehicles – lots of them – to Ukraine’s borders. Latterly, the island was home to a small population of Ukrainian frontier service staff. There were wrecks from the first and second world wars – a Russian destroyer, sunk in 1917 by a German mine a Soviet submarine, resting at a depth of 35 metres and a grain ship that had been bound for Europe. A lighthouse was built in the 19th century on the spot where a temple to Achilles once stood. In the modern age, rival powers contested the island: the Ottomans, the Russian empire and the Germans. Sailors were advised not to sleep there, lest they anger the gods. In some versions, Helen of Troy joined him. According to mythology, it was where the spirit of Achilles went after his death at Troy. The Greeks knew it as White Island, after its rock formations, or – as one story had it – the colour of its serpents. It was a rocky outpost in the Black Sea an ancient place known in Ukrainian as Ostriv Zmiin yi. They were being sent to a strategically important mini-territory 22 miles from Ukraine’s southern coast. He became a border guard, rose up the ranks and last year received an order to move to a new maritime location. Hotskiy tells me that as a teenager he wanted to join an elite service.
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