Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – A day after Moscow suffered a stinging symbolic defeat by losing the flagship of its Black Sea Fleet, Russia’s Defense Ministry on Friday pledged to launch missile attacks on the Ukrainian capital in response to Ukraine’s alleged military “distractions”. reinforce on Russian territory.”
The threat of increased attacks on Kyiv came after Russian authorities accused Ukraine of injuring seven people and damaging about 100 residential buildings in airstrikes on Bryansk, a region bordering Ukraine. Authorities in another border region of Russia also reported Ukrainian shelling on Thursday.
Kyiv has gradually shown some signs of pre-war life after Russian troops failed to capture the city and retreated to focus on a concentrated attack in eastern Ukraine, leaving behind evidence of possible war crimes. Another bombardment could have residents of the capital retreating to subway stations and the steady wailing of air raid sirens.
Ukrainian officials have not confirmed targets in Russia, and reports from Russian authorities have not been independently verified. However, Ukrainian officials claimed their forces launched missile attacks on a key Russian warship on Thursday. If true, the claim would represent an important victory.
The guided-missile cruiser Moskva, named after the Russian capital, sank Thursday while being towed into port after suffering severe damage in circumstances that remained controversial. Moscow confirmed fire on board but no attack. US and other western officials could not confirm what caused the fire.
The Moskva had the capacity to carry 16 long-range cruise missiles, and its distance reduces Russia’s firepower in the Black Sea. If Ukrainian forces knock out the ship, the Moskva will likely be the largest warship sunk in combat since the Falklands War. A British submarine torpedoed an Argentine naval cruiser named ARA General Belgrano during the 1982 conflict, killing over 300 sailors on board.
The loss of the Russian warship in an invasion already widely viewed as a historic blunder was also a symbolic defeat for Moscow as its troops regroup for an offensive in eastern Ukraine after evacuating the Kyiv region and much of Ukraine retreated north.
In his late night address on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the people of his country should be proud to have survived 50 days under attack when the Russian invaders “gave us a maximum of five”.
Zelenskyi did not mention the Moscow River by name, but while listing the ways Ukraine has defended itself against the attack, he mentioned “those who have shown that Russian warships can sail away, even if it hits the seabed.” It was his only reference to the Moskva.
News of the flagship overshadowed Russian claims of advances in the southern port city of Mariupol, where Moscow’s forces have been fighting Ukrainians in some of the heaviest fighting of the war since the early days of the invasion – at a terrible cost to civilians.
A dwindling number of Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol are 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 Programme, told The Associated Press 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 had died and the death toll could surpass 20,000. Other Ukrainian officials have said they expect to find evidence of atrocities against civilians, such as those uncovered in Bucha and other towns outside of Kyiv after the Russians withdrew.
Mariupol City Council said on Friday that locals reported that Russian troops were digging up bodies buried in residential yards and not allowing new burials “of people killed by them.”
“Why the exhumation is being carried out and where the bodies are being taken is unknown,” the council said in a statement published on the Telegram messaging app.
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 forthcoming offensive.
Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces in Donbass since 2014, the same year Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine. Russia has recognized the independence of two rebel-held areas of the region.
Although it is not certain when Russia will launch the full-scale campaign, a regional Ukrainian official said on Friday that seven people died and 27 were injured after Russian forces fired on buses carrying civilians in the village of Borovaya, near the northeastern city of Kharkiv had opened.
Ukrainian law enforcement agencies are working to clarify the circumstances of the attack, Dmytro Chubenko, a spokesman for the regional prosecutor’s office, told Ukrainian news website Suspilne.
Chubenko said Ukrainian authorities had opened a criminal case in connection with an alleged “violation of the laws and customs of war, combined with premeditated murder.” Claims of an attack on civilian buses could not be independently verified.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Friday that Russian strikes in the Kharkov region had “liquidated a group of mercenaries from a Polish private military company” of up to 30 people and “liberated” an iron and steel factory in Mariupol from “Ukrainian nationalists”. The claims could not be independently verified.
On Thursday, the Defense Ministry said fire damage to Russia’s Black Sea flagship led to the detonation of ammunition stowed on board. In addition to the cruise missiles, the warship also had anti-aircraft missiles and other artillery.
The ministry did not say what might have caused the fire, but reported that the “main missile weapons” were not damaged and the crew, who normally number around 500 people, abandoned the ship. It was unclear whether there were injuries.
Maksym Marchenko, the governor of Ukraine’s Black Sea region of Odessa, said Ukrainian forces hit the Moscow River with two Neptun missiles and caused “serious damage”. The Neptune is an anti-ship missile recently developed by Ukraine based on an earlier Soviet design.
The missile’s launchers are mounted on trucks stationed near shore and 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 Moscow River within range based on where the ship 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.
British defense officials said the loss of the Moscow River would likely force Moscow to change the way its naval forces operate in the Black Sea. In a social media post on Friday, Britain’s MoD said the ship, which returned to operational service last year after a major overhaul, “played a key role as both a command ship and an air defense hub.”
Other Russian ships in the northern Black Sea continued to move south after the Moscow River incident, said a senior US defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal military assessments.
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, claiming thousands of military casualties. 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.
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Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.
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