The confusion over the status of the Russian guided-missile destroyer Moskva has finally ended after Russian state media announced that the damaged ship has sunk while it was being towed to the Black Sea port of Sevastopol.
Russia’s defence ministry has said the Moskva naval missile cruiser, its flagship vessel in the Black Sea, has sunk, dealing a significant blow to Moscow’s offensive in southern Ukraine https://t.co/jZ9r6crMkG
— Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) April 14, 2022
As per Russian media, the Moskva, badly damaged after a ‘fire that cause ammunition explosion’, was being towed to the port of Sevastopol when the stormy seas caused the ship to sink. The Moskva’s crew were already evacuated into other ships.
As per many reports, the sinking of the Moskva is one of the biggest Naval losses after WWII.
Russia had earlier said that it will soon tow the Black Sea flagship Moskva back to the port after extinguishing a fire on board. Earlier Ukraine had claimed that the missile cruiser is hit by the Neptune missile and that it had sunk. But now the Russian defence ministry has said that the ship is still afloat and the main weaponry in the ship is still safe.
According to a report by Sky News, the crew on the ship Moskva was evacuated onto some other ships nearby. The Russian defence ministry also confirmed that the ship was damaged, however, they didn’t say that it was damaged due to a missile attack by Ukraine. Quoting the comments of the Russian defence ministry, the Tass news agency mentioned, “As a result of a fire on the Moskva missile cruiser, ammunition detonated.” However, the cause of the fire was not specified. The ministry said that it is still investigating the cause of the fire.
The ministry had said that the fire on ship had detonated the ammunition on board, and the fire was contained and the explosion of ammunition was also stopped.
Later the ministry said, “The source of the blaze on the Moskva has been contained. The explosions of ammunition have stopped.” They had further added that “the fire on the cruiser Moskva has been localized”. Quoting the ministry officials, RIA Novosti news agency said that the ship is maintaining buoyancy and that its main missile armament was not damaged in the incident. The ministry added that efforts are underway to tow the cruiser to Sevastopol port.
Some reports claimed that the ship has already arrived at the port, and some others even claimed that the ship was not towed but sailed on its own power.
Earlier, Ukrainian officials had stated that they have hit the Moskva with 2 anti-ship Neptune cruise missiles from the coastline between Odessa and Nikolayev and the Moskva is now sinking. However, there were conflicting versions of the claims by Ukraine, as while the Odesa state regional administrator claimed it was hit by Ukrainian missiles, Oleksiy Arestovych, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy, had said that there was a fire on the ship, and didn’t mention abou any missile hit.
“There’s a big fire … The sea is stormy so it’s unknown whether it’ll be possible to get them help. There are 510 crew members there. We can’t figure out what happened, either two sailors were smoking in the wrong place, or once again certain safety measures were violated,” Arestovych said as per a CNN report. However, later he had tweeted that the ship has drowned.
According to reports, Pentagon is also not sure what had happened with the ship. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that “there was an explosion” on the ship, but the United States could not immediately determine whether the ship was struck by a missile. “We’re not quite exactly sure what happened here. We do assess that there was an explosion, at least one explosion on this cruiser. A fairly major one at that, that has caused extensive damage to the ship,” the spokesman said.
Kirby had further added, “We assess that the ship is able to make its own way, and it is doing that; it’s heading more towards, now, we think the east. We think it’s probably going to be putting in at Sevastapol for repairs.”
Moskva was Russia’s flagship of the Black Sea fleet
The Moskva is a famous Russian warship, commissioned in 1983 and carries 16 anti-ship Vulkan cruise missiles. It also carries vertical tubes for 64 S-300 air defense missiles and rail launchers for 40 Osa missiles, as per a Forbes report. It is one of Russia’s 3 Slava class cruisers and is heavily armed, so an ‘ammunition explosion’, as Russia said happened, can severely damage the ship. According to the earlier reports, the blow to the ship was so heavy that it was considered beyond rescue. But now the Russian officials have come up with their resolution to tow the Black Sea flagship Moskva back to the port.
Earlier on March 24, the Russian landing ship Saratov was blown up on the Russian-occupied port of Berdyansk, possibly hit by a Ukrainian missile.
