# Seventeen Hectares, Nine Thousand Seven Hundred Square Kilometres

Snake Island is 0.17 km² — roughly the size of Cișmigiu Park in Bucharest. Romania lost it in 1948, seven months after a peace treaty had just reconfirmed its borders. Sixty-one years later, that same tiny island became the reason the International Court of Justice split 12,200 km² of sea between Romania and Ukraine.

## Key figures

- **0.17 km²** — the island's area, comparable to Cișmigiu Park.
- **9,700 km²** — awarded to Romania in 2009, larger than Timiș (8,697 km²), the country's largest county.
- **~80%** — the share of the 12,200 km² disputed zone awarded to Romania; the rest, roughly a fifth, stayed Ukrainian.
- **7 months** — the gap between the 1947 peace treaty and the 1948 protocol that changed its fate.

## Timeline

1878 — the Treaty of Berlin brings Dobruja, and the island, into Romania.
1944 — Soviet troops occupy the island.
1947 — the Paris Peace Treaty reconfirms Romania's pre-war borders.
1948 — a Soviet–Romanian protocol makes the island Soviet.
1991 — the island becomes Ukrainian, renamed Zmiinyi.
1997 — the Romania–Ukraine state border regime treaty.
2004 — Romania files its case at the ICJ.
2009 — the ICJ rules: beyond the 12-nautical-mile arc, the island has no effect on the delimitation. Romania receives nearly 80% of the disputed zone.
2014 — Russia's annexation of Crimea restores the island's strategic weight.
2022 — Russian attack, resistance, occupation, the sinking of the cruiser Moskva, Russian withdrawal.

## The legal mechanism

The Court ruled the island "should have no effect on the delimitation in this case" beyond the role of the 12-nautical-mile arc of its territorial sea (ICJ Judgment, 3 February 2009).

Full interactive page: https://mariuscomper.uk/saptesprezece-hectare/en/