Russia’s defence ministry says fire caused ammunition to blow up, claims it has been contained
A file picture of the Moskva, missile cruiser flagship of Russian Black Sea Fleet, entering Sevastopol bay. Pic/AFP
Ukraine’s southern military command said on Thursday that it hit the Russian warship Moskva with Neptune missiles on Wednesday, causing significant damage, and that the ship had started sinking.
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The southern military command said in a Facebook post that a fire had started after the strike. It said that Russian rescue ships were then hampered by ammunition exploding on board as well as bad weather that had caused the Moskva to start sinking. The ship would have had 500 sailors on board. All the crew had to evacuate.
Portraits of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Vladimir Putin and Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov during a protest over the invasion of Ukraine, in Warsaw, Poland on Wednesday. Pic/AP
Russia’s Defense Ministry said the fire on the Moskva has been contained. It said the vessel remains afloat and will be towed to the port.
Ukrainian officials claimed however that the ship has sunk, saying it’s a “resounding slap in the face” to Moscow’s forces.
The loss of the Soviet-era missile cruiser Moskva would be a blow to Russia’s military - on the 50th day of the war - as it readies for a new assault in the eastern Donbas region that is likely to define the outcome of the conflict. Russia’s defence ministry earlier said a fire on the Moskva caused ammunition to blow up, Interfax news agency reported, without saying what had caused the blaze. Maksym Marchenko, the Ukrainian governor of the region around the Black Sea port of Odesa, said the Moskva had been hit by two Ukrainian-made Neptune anti-ship cruise missiles.
“The sinking of the Moskva is a military event of colossal significance, the most significant loss by the Russian fleet since the Second World War, and the largest warship sunk anywhere in the world since 1945,” Oleksiy Arestovych, adviser to Ukrainian president’s office, said in a Facebook post.
Russia says its soldiers tortured
Russia’s Investigative Committee said on Thursday it was opening criminal cases into Ukrainian servicemen’s alleged torture of their Russian counterparts as Moscow continues its military campaign in Ukraine. The committee, which probes major crimes, said some Russian soldiers had been captured by Ukrainian forces in the Zaporizhzhia and Mykolaiv regions and held illegally by Ukraine’s security service.
Russia’s security service said on Thursday that a border post in the Bryansk region had been fired at with mortars from Ukraine in the latest of a series of reported cross-border attacks that Moscow has said may trigger an escalation of the conflict.
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