Pjotr Sauer, Julien Borger and Jessica Eliot – The Guardian April 14, 2022
Russia’s flagship missile cruiser Moskva has sunk in “stormy seas” while being towed to a port in the Black Sea following an explosion, the Russian defence ministry has announced.
The Ukrainian southern military command claimed late on Wednesday to have struck the Moskva with Neptune anti-ship cruise missiles, while distracting its crew with an aerial drone, causing it to start sinking and forcing the crew to abandon ship.
Russia’s defence ministry initially denied reports that it had sunk and claimed the fires had been extinguished. Four Russian ships that had gone to the Moskva’s rescue were being hampered by stormy weather and by ammunition blowing up onboard, it said.
But late on Thursday, the ministry said in a statement: “The cruiser ship Moskva lost its stability when it was towed to the port because of the damage to the ship’s hull that it received during the fire from the detonation of ammunition. In stormy sea conditions, the ship sank.”
Russia had said earlier that the crew of more than 500 crew were evacuated from the Soviet-era missile cruiser to other ships.
The apparent attack and sinking of the Black Sea fleet’s flagship – 50 days after Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine – represents a symbolic blow to the Kremlin. The Moskva was the pride of Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet and the most prestigious vessel involved in the war against Ukraine.
“The sinking of the Moskva, the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, is not just a significant loss, it is emblematic of the shambolic Russian military campaign,” said Michael Kofman, research programme director and Russia expert at the Center for Naval Analyses.
Russian missile cruiser Moskva. Click to enlarge
Commissioned in 1983, the ship was armed with 16 anti-ship Vulkan cruise missiles with a range of at least 440 miles (700km). According to reports, it was also carrying S-300 anti-air missiles, which are crucial to Russia’s air superiority over Crimea and Ukraine’s Kherson province, now occupied by Russian troops.
It is the most significant naval vessel to be sunk since the Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano was torpedoed by a British submarine, HMS Conqueror in 1982. It is the first time Moscow has lost a cruiser since German planes sunk the Chervona Ukraina (Red Ukraine) in 1941 at Sevastopol – the same Crimean naval base where the Moskva was being to towed towards when it sank.
Maksym Marchenko, the Ukrainian governor of the region around Odesa, said the Moskva had been hit by two cruise missiles. “Neptune missiles guarding the Black Sea caused very serious damage,” he said.
Unlikely to be a result of Uke action – the delay in the Uke claim gives it away. Ammunition explosion and subsequent fire is the most likely explanation, although the possibility of covert US/UK action should not be discounted.
We are starting to see all the same sort of keystone cop routines the Wehrmacht was guilty of in WW2…
Events so ridiculous they look like self sabotage…. in fact it looks like they are running the same script.
a = int(input(‘WW2: ‘))
b = int(input(‘WW3: ‘))
… thus it seems that even the hardened Russophile is beginning to question the nonsense..
Raputins beginning to look suspiciously like the Grand old Duke of York…
not that we cane expect much better from team B…
“The Empire of the Ladymen”…
NB: of course if one was of the same persuasion as Nico X one could.. whilst staring down the barrels of two empty bottles of fine scotch..
Presume Asov SS battalions are giving the jewish bolshevik scum a good hiding (hidden behind little girls and old ladies and mossad ground troops that have soiled their combat nappy’s )…
But that is equally hard to believe… don’t you think?..
Strange that the Russians would keep their capital ship within coastal anti-ship missile range, it’s too simple an explanation. I suspect western involvement but not enough data publicly available to be certain of anything. But it is a significant blow against Russia symbolically, equivalent to the psychological effect of a carrier being taken out for the US. On the ground however, Russia has all but won.
nothing to believe !
It’s that date again.
The UK’s Daily Mail has turned this into an amazing lie – according to that paper all 500 crew were killed.
This is not the first time that rag has lifted a story from Russian media, reversed it and printed it.