A “hard blow” that is as strategic as it is symbolic. The cruiser Moskva, flagship of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, sank on Thursday. This will have implications for their combat capabilities because the ship was a “key element of their effort to establish naval dominance in the Black Sea,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on CNN.
“I don’t even know when the last time a ship of this size sank during a military conflict,” he added, adding that he could not confirm the origin of the fire on the Moscow River’s edge. “I’m sure it’s been since World War II, but I can’t remember,” he concluded.
On Wednesday night, the Russian Defense Ministry had admitted that this 186-meter-long missile ship was “seriously damaged” by a fire that caused munitions to explode and that its crew of more than 500 had to be evacuated will. For his part, the Ukrainian governor of the Odessa region, Maxime Marchenko, said that Ukrainian forces hit the Moskva River with Ukrainian-made Neptun cruise missiles and caused “considerable damage”.