Both Ukraine and Russia have already confirmed that the largest Russian warship, Moskva, was shot down this Thursday in the Black Sea. According to the Odessa Regional Administration, the ship, with 500 crew on board, was hit by a Neptune missile, fired from Odessa.
“During the towing of the cruiser Moskva to the port of destination, the ship lost stability due to damage to the hull, suffered during the detonation of ammunition due to a fire. , cited by the TASS agency.
The Russian Defense Ministry stressed that the entire crew was transported to other ships part of the Black Sea fleet.
It is not yet known for sure what caused the sinking of the Moskva. According to Russian state news agencies Tass and Ria Novosti, the Defense Ministry previously said that an investigation is under way to determine the cause of the fire. Russian agencies did not mention the location of the Moskva when the explosion took place, nor any possible attack from Ukraine.
However, Kiev claims that the damage was caused by Ukrainian weapons. On Wednesday night, the head of Odesa’s regional military administration, Maksym Marchenko, said that Ukrainian forces had hit the Moskva with Neptuno missiles, causing “serious damage”, according to Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform.
This 186 meter long ship entered service in 1983 during the Soviet era under the name Slava (Glory). Designed to be an aircraft carrier destroyer, the vessel — equipped with an Atlant missile launcher — was renamed in 1995 as Moskva (Moscow).
Being able to house up to 680 crew, the first conflict in which it participated was that of Georgia in August 2008. Then, in September 2015, the Moskva was sent to help the Bashar al-Assad regime in the war in Syria, in the eastern Mediterranean, to ensure, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, the protection of the Russian base at Hmeymim. Shortly afterward, Vladimir Putin granted the entire crew the Nakhimov order, in recognition of their “courage and determination”.
From the city of Sevastopol, which houses the base of the Russian fleet that is in the Black Sea, on the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014, Moskva participated from the beginning in the offensive launched on February 24, 2022 by Vladimir Putin against the Ukraine.
In an exchange of radio messages that went viral at the start of the conflict, Ukrainian border guards on the tiny island of Serpents responded with profanity to the Russians’ ultimatum to surrender. Shortly afterward, the Moskva and another vessel bombed the island and took the Ukrainian military prisoner.
According to Russian news agency Ria Novosti, it has undergone renovations and modernizations twice, the last between 2018 and 2020.
Source: with Agencies
