The world has been witnessing a war crime for more than 50 days, and it is only intensifying. To its credit, Ukraine has not given up hope of retaining its cherished nationality, while Russian, on the other hand, has escalated its aggression following a shipwreck on Thursday.
The Moskva, Russia’s Black Sea fleet commander who was heading the country’s naval operations against the East European nation, was damaged by an explosion on Wednesday and sank the next day. While Moscow blamed the ship’s explosion on an explosion of the ship’s ammunition, Kyiv claimed the blast was caused by an attack using local Neptune cruise missiles.
The ship took part in an attack on Zmiinyi, or Snake Island, when Russia invaded Ukraine. In a widely circulated audio clip, a Ukrainian soldier says, “Russian battleship, go f*** yourself.”
“It is now the only class of ship in the Russian navy that has a long-range air defence system,” said Sidharth Kaushal, a research fellow for sea power at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
“That matters because the Moskva has the potential to sit back and generate an air defence for the type of operation the Black Sea Fleet is supposed to conduct.”
Moskva (1976–2022)
The 12,500-tonne Moskva was the sole ship of its class in the Black Sea, and it was armed with several anti-ship and surface-to-air missiles. It was commissioned in late December 1982 and was 186 metres (610 feet) long, with a crew of 476 people and an additional 62 commanders.
During the Cold War, it was the flagship of the Soviet navy in the Black Sea, with deck guns, torpedoes, and mortars, as well as nuclear weapons. There was also a helicopter deck on board.
Despite the fact that the Moskva had two sister ships, neither is currently in the Black Sea. They can’t get in because Turkey is restricting Russian navy vessels’ access to the Bosporus strait under the terms of the 1936 Montreux convention. The Marshal Ustinov and the Varyag, the other two missile cruisers, are assigned to Russia’s northern and Pacific fleets, respectively.
This ship is quite old. It has been planned to be scrapped for the past five years. It is more valuable in terms of status than in terms of actual combat usefulness, and it has nothing to do with the current operation. According to Russian military analyst Alexander Khramchikhin, “it will have no effect on the course of fighting.”
War update on Day 51
Invading Ukraine, Russia has suffered damage to two major naval assets, the first of which was Russia’s Alligator-class landing ship Saratov on March 24, the UK Ministry of Defence said in an intelligence update Friday.
People in Ukraine were braced for fresh Russian strikes after Neptune cruise missiles destroyed Moscow’s flagship battleship in the Black Sea. Powerful explosions were reported in Kyiv early Friday, and air raid sirens blared across the country as residents braced for new Russian attacks.
Because Russian forces have been continually blocked at Mykolayiv, the gateway to Odesa and Ukraine’s main Black Sea ports, a land attack has yet to occur. If they had broken through, the
Moskva could have encircled an amphibious assault with a protective bubble, much like it did during the 2008 Russia-Georgia war.
The city not only has the sole shipyard in the former Soviet Union capable of building an aircraft carrier, but it also has Zorya-Mashproekt, a manufacturer of gas turbine engines for large ships like the Moskva. Storm, a next-generation aircraft carrier, is still on paper, in part because Russia would have to retool one of its own if it didn’t have access to the Mykolayiv shipyard.
Another complication is the sanctions put on Russia as a result of its conduct in Ukraine. Its naval warships rely heavily on imported parts and technologies from countries that have enacted technology export bans.
It’s still unclear whether the ship sank as a result of Ukrainian missiles, Russian negligence, poor luck, or a mix of the three. What is certain, though, is that the largest wartime naval ship loss in 40 years will raise uncomfortable issues not only for Moscow, but also for the rest of the world.
