Russian sailors have evacuated the guided-missile cruiser Moskva, the flagship of its Black Sea fleet, after a fire that detonated ammunition on board, Russian state media reported on Wednesday.
The state media TASS and RIA, citing the Russian Defense Ministry, said the Moskva River was badly damaged in the incident and the cause of the fire is being investigated. The Russian reports contained no information about possible victims.
But hours earlier, a Ukrainian official claimed the Russian warship was hit by cruise missiles launched from Ukraine.
Due to large storms over the Black Sea obscuring satellite imagery and sensory satellite data, CNN was unable to visually confirm the ship was hit, or its current status, but analysts noted that a fire aboard one such ship can lead to a cataclysmic explosion that could sink it.
Whatever the cause of the fire, analysts say it strikes at the heart of the Russian Navy and at national pride, comparable to the loss of a US Navy battleship in World War II or an aircraft carrier today.
“Only the loss of a ballistic-missile submarine or the Kutznetsov (Russia’s only aircraft carrier) would inflict a more serious blow to Russian morale and the naval standing in the eyes of the Russian public,” said Carl Schuster, a retired US Navy captain and former Director of Operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center.
Alessio Patalano, a professor of war and strategy at King’s College London, said the loss of the warship was a “deep blow” to Russia.
“Ships operate out of the public eye and their activities are rarely the subject of news. But they are large floating pieces of state territory, and when you lose one, no less a flagship, the political and symbolic message – in addition to the military loss – stands out precisely because of that,” he said.
The 186 meter long Moskva with a crew of almost 500 is the pride of the Russian Black Sea naval fleet. Originally commissioned in the 1980s as the Slava with the Soviet Navy, it was renamed Moskva in 1995 and returned to service in 1998 after an overhaul, according to military site Naval-Technology.com.
The Moskva is armed with a range of anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles, as well as torpedoes and close-range naval guns and anti-missile defense systems.
All of these represent massive amounts of explosive ordnance in their ammo magazines. Any fire in their vicinity would have given the crew limited options to deal with the threat, Schuster said.
“If fire reaches your ammo magazines, you have two choices: 1) flood them, or 2) abandon ship,” Schuster said. “Otherwise your crew is on board to be wiped out by the catastrophic explosion that follows a fire reaching several hundred tons of ordnance.”
Odessa State Regional Administrator Maxim Marchenko claimed in a Telegram post that Ukrainian forces used Neptun cruise missiles to attack the Moskva River. If true, the Moskva might be the largest warship ever knocked out by a missile, Schuster said.
Such a feat would be a great step forward for Kiev’s armed forces.
The Neptun is a Ukrainian weapon developed domestically based on the Soviet KH-35 cruise missile. According to Ukrainian media reports, it entered service with the Ukrainian Armed Forces only last year.
If used to attack the Moscow River, it would be the Neptune’s first known use during the war, according to a post on the Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC) website by Lt. Cmdr. Jason Lancaster, a US Navy surface warfare officer.
In his contribution to CIMSEC on Tuesday, he said the threat of mobile land-based cruise missiles like the Neptune “changes the way an enemy operates”.
“Russian ships will operate in a manner that minimizes the risk of detection and maximizes their chances of defense,” Lancaster wrote. “These changes in behavior limit Russia’s ability to use its fleet to its advantage. The added stress of sudden combat increases fatigue and can lead to errors.”
“It seems as if the Russians learned that the hard way today,” says war professor Patalano.
In the CIMSEC paper, Lancaster notes that the British Royal Navy lost several ships to missiles fired by Argentina during the 1982 Falklands War.
During that war, a British submarine sank the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano, a former WWII US Navy ship similar in size to the Moskva.
The Moscow River also has symbolic importance for Ukraine, as it was one of the ships involved in the famous Snake Island exchange in February, according to Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
According to an alleged audio exchange in late February, as Russians approached the Ukrainian garrison on Snake Island, also known as Zmiinyi Island, in the Black Sea, a Russian officer said: “This is a military warship. This is a Russian military warship. I suggest you lay down your arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed and unnecessary casualties. Otherwise you will be bombed.”
A Ukrainian soldier replied: “Russian warship, fuck off.”
If lost, the Moskva would become the second large Russian naval ship to suffer this fate during Moscow’s war with Ukraine.
At the end of March, Ukraine announced that a missile attack had destroyed a Russian landing ship in the port of Berdyansk.