Ukraine has said it is bracing itself for revenge attacks from Russia after the “significant and symbolic” sinking of Russia’s flagship cruiser, the Moskva.
The government in Kyiv said it had destroyed the giant missile cruiser during a combat operation against Russian vessels in the Black Sea on Wednesday. The boat’s ammunition deck exploded after it was hit by two Neptune anti-ship missiles, it added.
According to Lithuania’s foreign minister, Arvydas Anušauskas, the cruiser sent out a distress call. By 1.14am local time (2314 BST) on Thursday the Moskva was lying on its side and about half an hour later “all the electricity went out,” he posted on Facebook.
From 2am a Turkish ship managed to rescue 54 sailors. An hour later Turkey and Romania confirmed the ship had “completely sunk”. Ukrainian officials said stormy weather stopped Russian boats from carrying out an evacuation, adding: “Nature was on our side.”
The Kremlin has not given any details on possible casualties among the 510 crew of the Moskva, and has not released any photographs of the stricken ship.
An article published by the Tass state-run news agency initially claimed the “entire crew” had been evacuated. It was later edited to remove the word “entire”. One unconfirmed Ukrainian report said 14 sailors including the chief of Moskva’s medical service were taken to the Crimean port of Sevastopol. The fate of the other 494 was unknown, it said. If they are confirmed to have drowned it would amount to the largest number of deaths of Russian servicemen in a single incident since the second world war.
Anton Gerashchenko, a Ukrainian interior ministry adviser who has a popular Telegram channel, posted a photo of the Moskva’s captain, Anton Kuprin. Kuprin was killed during the explosion and fire on the ship, Gerashchenko claimed.
It was Kuprin who gave the order for the Moskva to shell Snake Island in the Black Sea during the first hours of Moscow’s invasion. Its Ukrainian defenders refused to surrender and said: “Russian warship ‘go fuck yourself’” – a slogan that has become a national meme.
Ukrainians on Friday celebrated the ship’s demise. The defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, trolled his Russian counterparts by tweeting a photo of a scuba diver and a giant turtle. “A ‘flagship’ Russian warship is a worthy diving site,” he wrote, adding: “Will definitely visit the wreck after our victory in the war.”
A "flagship" russian warship is a worthy diving site. We have one more diving spot in the Black Sea now. Will definitely visit the wreck after our victory in the war.
— Oleksii Reznikov (@oleksiireznikov) April 15, 2022
BTW, I already have 300 scuba dives pic.twitter.com/q2Buc51qeI
Natalia Humeniuk, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern security and defence forces, said the sinking had dealt a blow to Vladimir Putin’s “imperial ambitions”. She added: “We understand that attacks will increase. The enemy will try to retaliate. It will increase rocket strikes and artillery shelling.”
Russia has said it is investigating what caused the Moskva to sink. Its defence ministry has promised to bomb targets in Kyiv in response to what it said were “terrorist and sabotage” attacks on its territory carried out by Ukraine’s “nationalist regime”. On Friday Moscow said it had struck a plant that made and repaired Ukrainian missiles, including anti-ship missiles, on the outskirts of the city.
On Russian television, hosts and pundits came perilously close to admitting that the loss of the cruiser was the result of an enemy attack as opposed to the result of an accident onboard. They also talked in vehement terms about wiping out “Ukraine-ness”.
“Just the fact there is an attack on our territory is casus belli, an absolute cause for war. A real war, no fooling around,” said the Russian film director and former MP Vladimir Bortko, on the popular 60 Minutes talkshow on state-run television. The special operation, as he was reminded Russia’s war is called, “ended tonight”.
When asked if he was speaking about the Moskva, he said: “The Moscow cruiser is absolutely a cause for war. One hundred per cent. It’s our flagship. There’s nothing to think about. We need an answer.”
On Telegram, prominent Russian officials sought to downplay the loss of a ship valued by Forbes at $750m (£575m). “The Moscow cruiser is a year older than me,” wrote Margarita Simonyan, the head of the state propaganda channel RT.
Andrei Medvedev, a deputy in the Moscow city parliament and a Russian state news journalist, paraphrased the Russian imperial field marshal Mikhail Kutuzov by writing: “The loss of [the] Moscow does not mean that Russia is lost.”
In a long post, he told his 70,000 subscribers on Telegram that the cruiser may indeed have been struck by a western missile with help from Nato and that the incident should be investigated.
“We are not fighting Ukraine, but Nato,” he wrote. “Strikes against our forces are made with the aid of Nato systems. And often with their weapons.” Like others, he added that the ship was old. “The Moskva, with all due respect, was not a young cruiser,” he wrote.
Ukraine says it has damaged or sunk eight Russian ships and boats, reducing Russia’s capacity to attack the south of Ukraine and the port city of Odesa. It said about 20,000 Russian soldiers and officers had been killed since the beginning of Putin’s military operation on 24 February.
In an intelligence update on Friday, the UK’s defence ministry said the Moskva “served a key role as a command vessel and air defence node”. Moscow was now likely to review its “maritime posture” in the Black Sea, it said. The Soviet-era boat had been through an extensive refit, only returning to service last year, it added.
The last time Russia lost its flagship cruiser was in 1904, when the imperial vessel Petropavlovsk went down in the tsar’s war with Japan. Ukrainian officials acknowledge the sinking of the Moskva does not mean Russia is beaten. But they see it as a signal event.
Russia, meanwhile, has used long-range Tupolev bombers for the first time to attack the besieged port city of Mariupol, Ukraine’s defence ministry spokesperson, Oleksandr Motuzyanyk, said on Friday. Russia had not managed to fully control the port city, he added, despite a six-week siege.
