Moscow admitted on Friday that the sinking of its main warship in the Black Sea, the Moskva, left one sailor dead and 27 crew members missing. A symbol of the country’s naval power, the ship sank on the 14th, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
The Kremlin had declined to comment on possible casualties so far. Another 396 people were rescued from the ship.
The ship is at the center of a war of narratives between Moscow and Kiev: the Ukrainians claim that the vessel sank after being hit by a cruise missile, while the Russians claim that there was a fire after the explosion of ammunition transported there.
Neither version could be independently confirmed, but military analysts say that if the Ukrainian attack was real, it would have dealt a moral blow to Vladimir Putin’s government. The Ukrainian government claims it managed to hit the warship with a Ukrainian-made missile dubbed the Neptune.
The Moskva (Moscow, in Russian) is about 186 meters long, joined the country’s fleet in the early 1980s and was built in the port of Mikolaiv, in territory that today belongs to Ukraine – at the time, still part of the European Union. soviet.
According to Russian news agencies, the sinking occurred due to a loss of stability, due to damage to the hull, as the vessel was towed back to port amid rough sea conditions. The Kremlin, which did not acknowledge the Ukrainian attack, says it is investigating the cause of the blast.
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.
The ship gained notoriety early in the war for the attack on Cobra Island, in which 19 Ukrainian sailors were captured and later exchanged for Russian prisoners.
The Black Sea is considered essential to the Russian military campaign and supports ground operations in southern and eastern Ukraine – now the epicenter of Moscow’s operation, which aims to build a link between Crimea, annexed in 2014, and Donbass. . From there, the Navy has already fired cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities.
The United States said it did not have enough information to determine whether the Moskva was hit by a missile. “But the way it [o naufrágio] unfolded, it’s a huge blow to Russia,” said national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
