What about the crew of the Russian cruiser that sank in the Black Sea on April 14? Five days after the events, the first pictures give little information about the fate of the sailors.
Thick black smoke rises from the central castle. The ship leans to port under the effect of the list. Or is it the start of the Ukrainian strike? The first images of the sinking of the cruiser Moskva, which have been circulating on social networks since Sunday evening, only give a vague indication of what really happened in the Black Sea on April 14. Only one thing is certain: the ship is actually on the seabed. By the way, who sank it? What will become of the crew? The secret remains.
According to observers, the authenticity of the pictures leaves little doubt. We see the ship badly damaged, but no sign of men on board. “The photos were taken when the boat was already left to its fate,” analyzes Thibault Lamidel, specialist in naval affairs. A short video, barely a few seconds long and shot as if the hand behind the camera wanted to be discreet, seems to confirm that its creator “was not really authorized to take pictures”, notes the expert interviewed by Le Figaro.
The Ukrainian version confirmed
Although thin, what do the elements taken from the photographs say? “The disaster has visibly damaged the central structures and perhaps even the command structures, which are barely visible behind the smoke,” describes Thibaut Lamidel. Two jets of water can be seen trying to douse the flames. According to various observers, they came from a Russian sea tug hidden behind the ship, “the rescuer of the Sliva class SB-922,” specifies the blogger small think tank. “This coincides with the presence of five Russian rescue ships in the vicinity at the time of the events,” explains Thibault Lamidel. According to the specialist, the fight against the disaster would have started around 2 or 3 p.m. before being abandoned to proceed with the evacuation of the crew.
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However, nothing in the pictures refutes Moscow’s thesis that a munitions explosion forced the crew to abandon ship. But if two RK-360MTS Neptune subsonic anti-ship missiles hit the ship, as Kyiv claims, visible trails at and below the waterline seem to support it. Impacts “right where most anti-ship cruise missiles are supposed to hit,” notes blogger Tyler Rogoway on his specialized website, The War Zone.
likely victims
What about sailors? There, too, the versions are contradictory. For Kyiv, there is no doubt that the sailors sank to the seabed with the ship because “a storm prevented the ship from being rescued and the crew from being evacuated,” a military source said, but acknowledged it could not enter no details “lack of reliable data”. For its part, Moscow claims that the crew, which ranges from 485 to 510 sailors for a flagship of this type, was evacuated to other Black Sea Fleet ships nearby and would be safe and sound in Sevastopol.
Based on the photos, a certain number of victims is very likely, estimates Thibault Lamidel. “The affected part corresponds to the energy center that supplies electricity to the whole boat,” he explains to Figaro. If a hit occurs, the missiles are bound to hit the propulsion specialists at that key post. “Unless the warning was given in time, which is not impossible,” specifies the analyst. “It all depends on how surprised the accident was by the crew.”
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“List of Missing”
Another echo also rocked the official Russian version. This is the statement of a sailor’s father broadcast on VKontakte, Russia’s Facebook, and picked up by Russian media Meduza. The Russian warns of the fate of his son, who was embarked on the Moscow River as a cook and would be on a “missing list”. “Guys, please spread this information,” the father asks in a post that was first deleted and then reposted.
Russia’s defense minister released a video on Saturday showing Moskva sailors in uniform and lined up being greeted by an officer, Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov. “Flagless and cynical lies!” exclaims the sailor’s father. Only a hundred sailors appear on the video. Why should the others be missing? Are you hurt? Disappeared? Isn’t the video from before the sinking? The ship’s captain, Anton Kuprin, who was reported on social media as killed in the blast, “is a perfect match” for one of the characters seen in the video, maritime intelligence expert HI Sutton writes on his blog Celebration.
On the Russian social network, the father claims to have been contacted by several other sailor families. And calls on “those who are not afraid” to spread his call “so that the bastards do not ‘suffocate’ this terrible tragedy”. “This confirms a very widespread trend in the Russian armies: the lack of transparency in human losses,” decodes researcher Anna Colin Lebedev.
For the Russia specialist, the history of the Moskva is reminiscent of that of the Kursk submarine, which was the victim of a double explosion when Vladimir Putin was newly elected head of the Russian Federation. A mystery remained the object of all fantasies, due to a lack of institutional communication. In any case, all assumptions are uncomfortable for Moscow. Whether it’s an attack by Ukrainian missiles or a spontaneous fire on the ship doesn’t say much about the military capabilities of this ship or the Russian fleet in general.
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