Russian Navy’s warship sinks in Black Sea, Ukraine claims it was hit by a missile

Russian Navy’s warship sunk in the Black Sea, a huge blow to army struggling against Ukrainian resistance 50 days into Vladimir Putin’s invasion of his neighbor.

In a statement Russian Ministry of Defense told, TASS the Russian state news agency reported on Thursday evening that the guided-missile cruiser Moskva sunk.

According to TASS, “During the towing of the cruiser Moskva to the port of destination, the ship lost its stability due to hull damage received during a fire from the detonation of ammunition. In the conditions of stormy seas, the ship sank.”

On Thursday Ukraine’s Operational Command South claimed that the warship had begun to sink after it was hit Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missiles.

The statement said, “In the Black Sea operational zone, Neptune anti-ship cruise missiles hit the cruiser Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet — it received significant damage,”

“A fire broke out. Other units of the ship’s group tried to help, but a storm and a powerful explosion of ammunition overturned the cruiser and it began to sink.”

According to Russian a fire broke out on the guided-missile cruiser, which cause munitions aboard to explode, inflicting serious damage, and forced the crew of the warship to be evacuated.

Russia’s defense ministry told that the warship “remains afloat” and that measures were being taken to tow it to port. The ministry told that, the crew had been evacuated to other Black Sea Fleet ships in the area.

Two known sources with US and Western intelligence told that, Ukraine is claiming that it is believed to be credible, although US officials do not yet have definitive proof.

One source known with the latest intelligence told that the US believes with “medium confidence” that Ukraine’s version of events is accurate.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said, “We’re not in a position to officially confirm independently what exactly led to the ship’s now sinking,”

“But we’re also not in any position to refute the Ukrainian side of this. It’s certainly plausible and possible that they did in fact hit this with a Neptune missile or maybe more.”

Whatever happened to the warship, analysts says that this loss would strike hard at the heart of the Russian navy as well as national pride, comparable to the US Navy losing a battleship during World War II or an aircraft carrier today.

Carl Schuster, a retired US Navy captain and former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center in his statement said.

“Only the loss of a ballistic missile submarine or the Kutznetsov would inflict a more serious blow to Russian morale and the navy’s reputation with the Russian public,”

Alessio Patalano, professor of war and strategy at King’s College in London, in his statement said,

“Ships operate away from public attention and their activities are rarely the subject of news. But they are large floating pieces of national territory, and when you lose one, a flagship no less, the political and symbolic message — in addition to the military loss — stands out precisely because of it.”

Warship was 611-foot-long (186 meters), having crew of almost 500, is the pride of the Russian naval fleet in the Black Sea. Which is originally commissioned into the Soviet navy as the Slava in the 1980s, it was renamed Moskva in 1995 and after a refit reentered service in 1998, according to military site Naval-Technology.com.

Schuster said, “When a fire reaches your ammunition magazine(s), you have two choices; 1) flood them or 2) abandon ship,” Schuster said. “Otherwise your crew is onboard to be wiped out by the catastrophic explosion that follows a fire reaching several hundred tons of ordnance.”

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