"Historical blow": Russia's flagship "Moskva" sinks - government officials suspect "incompetence"

Created: 04/16/2022, 10:08 am

By: Patrick Mayer

In the Ukraine war, the Russian Navy loses the flagship of its Black Sea fleet, the “Moskva”.

Why the sinking of the guided missile cruiser is so bitter for Vladimir Putin.

Munich/Sevastopol – He praises all those “who have shown that Russian ships can only get to the bottom”.

The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj celebrated the alleged sinking of the Russian guided missile cruiser "Moskva" (Russian: Moscow)* in a video speech on Friday morning (April 15) in the Russia-Ukraine war*.

The Russian Defense Ministry had previously confirmed the loss of the Black Sea Fleet flagship.

Russia-Ukraine War: Flagship Moskva sunk or sunk

The versions of the course of the sinking of the Moscow River (once again) differed widely in the Ukraine conflict*.

The Ukrainian side said they set the warship on fire using a Neptune anti-ship missile.

Moscow, in turn, spread a thesis that ammunition had exploded below deck and that the "Moskva" had gone under when trying to tow it in heavy seas.

Among other things, weather expert Jörg Kachelmann contradicted this thesis - there was no storm in the night in the Black Sea, he tweeted.

Sevastopol base in the Crimea: The heavy guided missile cruiser "Moskva", which sank in the Russia-Ukraine war, is at anchor.

(Archive photo) © dpa-Bildfunk

Moscow had said that the crew of around 500 had been evacuated.

That too could not be verified independently.

In any case, the sinking of the missile cruiser is of great psychological importance.

For Russia's ruler Vladimir Putin, the loss of the ship must have been a major setback.

There are photos from earlier days showing Putin visiting the crew of the guided missile cruiser in the port of Sevastopol in Crimea.

“Moskva”: missile cruiser involved in almost all military conflicts of Vladimir Putin

The photos show a smiling Russian President.

The "Moskva", which entered service in the Soviet Union in 1983, was involved in almost all of Putin's military conflicts - with the exception of the second Chechen war.

For example, in August 2008, during the nine-day Caucasus War, the warship cruised off the coast of attacked Georgia.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the warship secured the Hmeimim airbase in Syria between September 2015 and January 2016 after Moscow intervened in the Syrian war on the side of Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad.

Since February 24, 2022, the warship was also involved in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The "Moskva" fired on a Ukrainian border guard on the tiny island of Snakes in the Black Sea.

The border guards were killed or captured.

A radio message of unequal combat operations went viral.

The few Ukrainians are said to have responded to the call to surrender by radio: "Russian warship, go f*ck yourself".

In English: "Russian warship, f**k you".

The Ukrainian Post has since issued a postage stamp on the incident.

You can see a soldier giving the "Moskva" the "stinky finger".

The persistence of the Snake Island border guards became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance to numerical Russian superiority.

"Moskva": Vladimir Putin has a special connection to the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet

The "Moskva" also had a high symbolic value for the Russian President.

Putin is said to have received Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi and then Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on the warship.

The “Moskva” was already in focus at the end of the Cold War in 1989: At the “Malta Summit”, US President George Bush and the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, came to the Mediterranean island after the fall of the Berlin Wall together.

Discussions were also supposed to take place on the "Moskva", still called "Slava" (Russian: Glory), but were relocated to the cruise ship "Maxim Gorki" due to stormy seas.

Now that the Moskva has sunk, it is being cited as Russia's greatest material loss in the Ukraine conflict.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the sinking of the Moskva would have "consequences" for the Russian Navy's operational capability.

The cruiser played a "key role" in Russia's efforts to establish "naval dominance in the Black Sea," Kirby told US broadcaster CNN. 

“Either they were vulnerable to a Ukrainian attack and that calls their competence into question.

Or a fire on board an important ship has led to a detonation in the ammunition room, and that would also be a sign of incompetence," a Western government official said, according to the

news agency .

It is a "blow to the pride of the military".

Sinking of the "Moskva": Military success for Ukraine, setback for Russia

But that's not all.

"This success of the Ukraine has a very high symbolic effect," just because of the "name" of the ship, quotes the Austrian

Colonel Markus Reisner, head of the development department of the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt.

Alessio Patalano, a strategy expert at King's College London, wrote on Twitter of a "historic blow in naval history".

The

, in turn, quoted Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, a former commander of the US Army in Europe, who spoke of a "big deal".

The sinking of the "Moskva" could prevent the Russian Navy and the Ministry of Defense in Moscow* from planning landing operations on Ukrainian beaches.

On March 24, Ukraine's Defense Ministry reported the alleged sinking of a giant Russian Alligator-class landing ship - capable of transporting up to 20 tanks - in the port city of Berdyansk, which photos on social media are said to confirm.

Now the "Moskva" sank.

A downfall with a high symbolic character.

For everyone involved.

*