The Russian Defense Ministry said on Thursday that the crew of the Moskva, the flagship of the country’s Black Sea fleet and symbol of Russian naval power, had been evacuated and that the flames that engulfed the ship had been brought under control. The cruiser, which would still be afloat, is now being taken back to port.
The episode is yet another one that illustrates the war of narratives between Moscow and Kiev. While the Russian defense claims that the fire was caused after the ammunition transported there exploded, for reasons still unknown, the Ukrainian military says it hit the ship with a domestically made Neptune missile and that the structure began to sink.
Neither version could be independently confirmed, but military analysts describe that, if the Ukrainian attack is confirmed, the episode would represent a major moral blow to the government of Vladimir Putin on the 50th day of the war in Eastern Europe.
The ship, about 186 meters long, joined the Russian fleet in the early 1980s and was built in the port of Mikolaiv, in what is now Ukraine – then part of the Soviet Union. The capacity is over 500 crew.
The cruiser played an important role in several of the country’s military campaigns, including in Syria. Russian news agencies say 16 missiles with a range of up to 700 km were on board.
Meanwhile, attacks are intensifying in the eastern part of Ukrainian territory and on the country’s border with Russia. The FSB (Federal Security Service) accused Kiev of having fired mortars at a border post in Russia’s Briansk region and said no one was hurt. Ukrainian authorities have yet to comment on the incident.
The UK Ministry of Defence, which monitors the matter, said in its daily report that the cities of Kramatorsk and Kostiantinivka are likely to be the next Russian targets with widespread attacks.
The Kharkiv, Donetsk and Zaporijia regions, all to the east, are the hardest hit at the moment, said Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar. In the first, Governor Oleh Siniegubov claimed that four civilians were killed and another 10 were wounded during a bombing. He also urged residents of some villages to withdraw, as military operations are expected to take place in these areas.
Kiev accuses Moscow of massing troops not only on Ukraine’s eastern border, but also in Transnistria — the pro-Moscow area of ​​Moldova — and Belarus, a Moscow-allied dictatorship that has hosted fruitless ceasefire negotiations.
The country reopened on Thursday nine humanitarian corridors, which had been closed the previous day, said Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereschuk. Civilian evacuation routes will be established in cities such as besieged Mariupol, Tokmak, Enerhodar and Berdiansk.
She also said that a corridor would be opened in Lugansk, in the ethnically Russian-majority Donbass, but only if the Russians stopped bombing. Ukrainian officials have called on the regional population to flee westward for fear of intensifying Russian attacks in Donbass.
Also on Thursday, the Kremlin raised its tone in threats to Finland and Sweden, countries geographically close to Russia that are discussing, in an accelerated way by the war, the possibility of joining NATO (Western military alliance).
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Perkov told reporters that Putin would consider a series of measures to strengthen the country’s security if Finland and Sweden join the alliance and that Russian defense is already preparing proposals on the matter, without specifying them. them.
Shortly afterwards, one of Putin’s main allies, Dmitri Medvedev, former president and current deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council, said that if the countries decide to join, Russia will have to strengthen its naval and air forces in the Baltic Sea. . And he raised the nuclear threat by saying that it will no longer be possible to speak of a “Nuclear-Free Baltic”. “The balance must be restored,” he said.
“So far, Russia has not taken these measures and would not take them, but if we are forced to do so, remember that we did not propose it,” added the Russian.
Lithuania, which, along with Poland, borders the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, has played down the threats. Defense Minister Arvydas Anusauskas told a local channel that Russia already has tactical nuclear missiles stored there. “The international community and the countries of the region are fully aware of this; they [os russos] use it as a threat only,” he continued.
