In his late-night video address to the nation, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy alluded to the sinking when he told Ukrainians to be proud of surviving 50 days under attack when the Russians “gave us a maximum of five.”
He enumerated the many ways Ukraine has defended itself against invasion, noting “those that have shown that Russian warships can sail away, even if it goes to the bottom of the sea.” It was his only reference to the missile cruiser.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the ship sank in a storm while being towed to a port. Russia earlier said the flames on the ship, which would normally have 500 sailors on board, forced the entire crew to evacuate. It was later said the fire had been contained.
The Moskva had the capacity to carry 16 long-range cruise missiles, and its distance reduces Russia’s firepower in the Black Sea. It’s also a blow to Moscow’s prestige in a war already widely viewed as a historic blunder. The invasion, now entering its eighth week, has stalled amid resistance from Ukrainian fighters, backed by arms and other aid from Western nations.
In the early days of the war, the Moskva was reportedly the ship that called for surrender to Ukrainian soldiers stationed on Snake Island in the Black Sea. In a widely circulated record, a soldier replied, “Russian warship, go (expletive) yourself.”
The Associated Press has not been able to independently verify the incident, but Ukraine and its supporters regard it as an iconic moment of defiance. The country recently unveiled a postage stamp commemorating this.
News of the flagship overshadowed Russian claims of progress in the southern port city of Mariupol, where Moscow’s forces have been fighting the Ukrainians in some of the heaviest fighting of the war since the early days of the invasion – at a terrible cost to civilians.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said Wednesday that 1,026 Ukrainian troops surrendered at a metal factory in the city. But Vadym Denysenko, adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Minister, dismissed the claim, telling Current Time TV that “the battle for the seaport is still ongoing today.”
It was unclear how many forces were still defending Mariupol.
Russian state television broadcast footage allegedly from Mariupol showing dozens of men in camouflage clothing walking with their hands raised and others carrying stretchers. A man held a white flag.
Mariupol was the scene of some of the worst suffering of the war. A dwindling number of Ukrainian defenders is withstanding a siege that has trapped well over 100,000 civilians in dire need of food, water and heating. David Beasley, executive director of the UN World Food Program, told the AP in an interview on Thursday that people in the besieged city were “starving to death”.
The mayor of Mariupol said this week that more than 10,000 civilians have died and the death toll could surpass 20,000 after weeks of attacks and deprivation left the bodies “scattered on the streets”.
The capture of Mariupol is crucial for Russia as it would allow its forces in the south, advancing via the annexed Crimean Peninsula, to fully align with troops in the Donbass region, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland and the objective of the coming offensive.
The Russian military continues to pool helicopters and other equipment for such efforts and is likely to add more ground combat units “in the coming days,” according to a senior US defense official. But it is still unclear when Russia could launch a major offensive in the Donbass.
Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukraine in Donbass since 2014, the same year Russia occupied Crimea. Russia has recognized the independence of the rebel regions in Donbass.
The loss of the Moskva could delay any new, wide-ranging offensive.
Maksym Marchenko, the governor of the Odessa region, across the Black Sea northwest of Sevastopol, said the Ukrainians hit the ship with two Neptun missiles and caused “severe damage”.
The Russian Defense Ministry said ammunition on board exploded as a result of a fire, without saying what caused the fire. It said the “main missile weapons” were not damaged. In addition to the cruise missiles, the warship also had anti-aircraft missiles and other artillery.
The Neptune is an anti-ship missile recently developed by Ukraine, based on an earlier Soviet design. The launchers are mounted on trucks stationed near shore, and the missiles can hit targets up to 280 kilometers (175 miles) away, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. That would have put the Moskva within range, depending on where it was when the fire broke out.
Launched in 1979 as Slava, the cruiser saw action during the Cold War and conflicts in Georgia and Syria, and helped conduct scientific peace research with the United States. During the Cold War it carried nuclear weapons.
In 1989, the Slava was scheduled to host a meeting between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US President George HW Bush off Malta, but gale force winds pushed the talks to the docked cruiser Maxim Gorky.
On Thursday, other Russian ships also in the northern Black Sea were moving further south after the Moscow River caught fire, said a senior US defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal military assessments.
Before the Moskva sank, Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine’s defense minister, told the AP that removing it would mean “we can only breathe a sigh of relief.”
While the US could not confirm Ukraine’s claims of attacking the warship, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan called it “a major blow to Russia”.
“They had to choose between two stories: one story was that it was just incompetence, and the other story was that they were attacked, and neither is a particularly good outcome for them,” Sullivan told the Economic Club of Washington.
Russia invaded on February 24, potentially losing thousands of fighters. The conflict has killed scores of Ukrainian civilians and forced millions more to flee.
It has also continued to drive up prices at grocery stores and gas pumps, while battering the global economy. The head of the International Monetary Fund said Thursday that the war helped push the organization to downgrade economic forecasts for 143 countries.
Also on Thursday, Russian authorities accused Ukraine of sending two low-flying military helicopters about 11 kilometers (7 miles) across the border and firing on residential buildings in the village of Klimovo in Russia’s Bryansk region. According to the Russian investigative committee, seven people, including a toddler, were injured.
Russia’s State Security Service had previously said Ukrainian forces fired mortar shells at a border post in Bryansk as refugees crossed, forcing them to flee.
The reports could not be independently verified. Earlier this month, Ukrainian security officials denied that Kyiv was behind an airstrike on an oil depot in the Russian city of Belgorod, some 55 kilometers from the border.
___
Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.