DID A UKRAINE MISSILE SINK A RUSSIAN FLAGSHIP?

 

                                           …This is the Russian Flagship Moskva

 

It appears that once again, is Russia lying about what really happened?

 

If Russia didn’t have enough problems in dealing with the Ukrainians and the war, now their flagship missile cruiser Moskva in the Black Sea is having a serious problem.  Is it being towed to port and are the Russians really saying that there was a fire on board and it sustained serious damage?

On the other hand, the Ukrainians are claiming that one of their missiles attacked and sank the ship. 

Needless to say, there is conflicting assertions about what happened to the key Russian warship, but was it sunk?  Is it really being towed to port and did it sustain serious damage from a fire?

But whatever happened to the Russian navy missile cruiser Moskva, the flagship of its Black Sea Fleet, this episode serves as a significant morale boost for beleaguered Ukrainian forces and a major blow to Russia.

Late Wednesday, the Russian Odessa state regional administrator Maxim Marchenko said a Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship cruise missile had struck the Moskva, causing serious damage. Hours later, the Russian Defense Ministry acknowledged that a key ship in its Black Sea fleet had sustained significant damage but did not address the Ukrainian claims.  

We know how the Russian’s lie about everything, so what is really true is unknown.

Instead, the Russians now say they will investigate what had caused the damage, but instead blamed the setback on a fire that detonated the ship’s ammunition. All of the ship’s approximately 500 crew members were evacuated to other Black Sea Fleet ships in the area, Russia said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry later said that “the fire on the cruiser Moskva has been localized” and that “explosions of ammunition have been stopped,” the Russian news agency reported.  It said the ship is maintaining “buoyancy” and that its “main missile armament” was not damaged. The ministry added that efforts are underway “to tow the cruiser to the port” and that the cause of the fire is under investigation.

Ukraine said in an update that the Moskva “was severely damaged” by a Neptune missile that caused a fire. “Other units of the ship’s group tried to help, but a storm and a powerful explosion of ammunition overturned the cruiser and it began to sink,” the Ukrainian military said.

Adding to the confusion, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky  told CNN that senior Ukrainian officials were not sure what was true. “Either two sailors were smoking in the wrong place, or once again certain safety measures were violated,” said Oleksiy Arestovych. He later tweeted that the ship “drowned.”

Early Thursday, the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a Moscow-based think tank, said on its Telegram channel that it believed the ship had been sunk and sided with the Ukrainian assessment. “The flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the Moskva cruiser, was indeed attacked by the Neptune anti-ship missiles from the coastline between Odessa and Nikolaev,” it said.  A drone had distracted the ship before the missiles hit, it said.

If the 12,000-ton Moskva it was sunk, it would be the largest wartime sinking of a naval vessel since World War II.

The Washington Post could not independently verify the accuracy of any of the claims.

The Moskva does not have major strategic value, but as the Black Sea flagship, it possesses symbolic significance, said Artyom Lukin, an international relations professor at the Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok, Russia.

The ship is named after a Russia’s capital and was at the center of a widely reported attack on Snake Island, when Ukrainian border guards drew global attention for insulting Russian troops during the early days of the invasion.

“The loss of not just a principal surface combatant in the Russian navy, but also the fleet flagship, would amount to more of a psychological blow to the Russians,” said Collin Koh, an expert on maritime security at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

The notion that Ukrainian missiles hit the Moskva reinforces “the image of hardened resistance by the Ukrainians” and sows “more doubt in the minds of Russian servicemen,” particularly the sailors serving on Russian warships off Ukraine’s southern coast, he added.

The damage to the Moskva is more significant because it comes in the wake of previous Russian naval losses, said James Black, an expert on the Russian military at the Rand Corporation. Last month, Ukraine’s navy said it had hit a Russian amphibious landing ship in Berdyansk, a Ukrainian port that Russian forces have occupied.

If the ship wasn’t hit by a Ukrainian strike, the incident represents another “indictment of the readiness, organization, training and equipment of the Russian armed forces,” Black said.  If it was hit by Ukraine’s Neptune anti-ship missiles, that would represent a high-profile success for the country’s defense industry, which designed the missiles, he added.

“It will likely be seen as poetic justice by Ukrainians and their supporters,” Black said.

As stated, what is the truth will not be known for some time.

Copyright G. Ater 2022