Russian warship badly damaged after missile strike
KYIV, UKRAINE » The Russian military suffered a major blow Thursday when the flagship of the country’s Black Sea fleet was badly damaged and its crew evacuated. Ukrainian officials said their forces hit the vessel with missiles, while Russia acknowledged a fire aboard the Moskva but no attack.
The warship named for the Russian capital was 69 to 74 miles south of Odesa when the fire ignited, and the vessel crew was still battling flames hours later while heading east, according to a Pentagon official. The loss of the ship would be a major military setback and a devastating symbolic defeat for Moscow as its troops regroup for a renewed offensive in eastern Ukraine after retreating from much of the north, including the capital.
Despite an early report from one Ukrainian official saying the ship had sunk, the Moskva was still moving on its own power, at least for now, a senior U.S. defense official said. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal U.S. military assessments, said the Pentagon could not confirm what caused the fire.
Russia said the fire aboard the ship, which would typically have 500 sailors on board, forced the crew to evacuate it. Russia later said the fire had been contained and that the ship would be towed to port with its guided missile launchers intact.
The ship can carry 16 long-range cruise missiles, and its removal from combat would greatly reduce Russia’s firepower in the Black Sea. Regardless of the extent of the damage, any attack would represent a huge blow to Russian prestige in a war already widely seen as a historic blunder.
Entering its eighth week, Russia’s invasion has stalled because of resistance from Ukrainian fighters bolstered by weapons and other aid sent by Western nations.
Satellite photos from Planet Labs PBC show the Moskva steaming out of the port of Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula on Sunday. But cloud cover on Thursday made it impossible to use satellite images to locate the ship or determine its condition.
Surrender claim
The news of the flagship’s damage overshadowed Russian claims of advances in the southern port city of Mariupol, where they have been battling the Ukrainians since the early days of the invasion in some of the heaviest fighting of the war, at a horrific cost to civilians.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Wednesday that 1,026 Ukrainian troops surrendered at a metals factory in the city.
But Vadym Denysenko, adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, rejected the claim, telling Current Time TV that “the battle over the seaport is still ongoing today.”
It was unclear how many forces were still defending Mariupol.
Russian state television broadcast footage that it said was from Mariupol showing dozens of men in camouflage walking with their hands up and carrying others on stretchers. One man held a white flag.
Mariupol’s capture is critical for Russia because it would allow its forces in the south, which came up through the annexed Crimean Peninsula, to fully link up with troops in the eastern Donbas region, Ukraine’s industrial heartland and the target of the coming offensive.
Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukraine in the Donbas since 2014, the same year Russia seized Crimea. Russia has recognized the independence of the rebel regions in the Donbas.
The loss of the Moskva could delay any new, wideranging offensive.
Maksym Marchenko, the governor of the Odesa region, across the Black Sea to the northwest of Sevastopol, said the Ukrainians struck the ship with two Neptune missiles and caused “serious damage.”