KYIV (UKRAINE) : The flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, the missile cruiser Moskva, was seriously damaged and abandoned by its crew after its ammunition blew up, Russia’s Defense Ministry said. Ukrainian officials and a person close to Russia’s Defense Ministry said Ukraine hit the warship with cruise missiles and sank it.
The Moskva’s entire crew, which usually numbers some 500 sailors, was rescued after a fire that led to the explosion, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement carried by state news agencies. It didn’t say what caused the fire.
The Moskva and other Russian ships in the Black Sea have been used to fire cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities since the war began on Feb. 24, targeting infrastructure, fuel depots, military bases and civilian administrative buildings across the country.
Maksym Marchenko, the governor of Ukraine’s coastal region of Odessa, said on social media that the Moskva was hit by Neptune missiles, which Ukraine developed and said earlier this year would be deployed by April. This would represent the first known use by Kyiv of the Neptune, an extension of the Soviet-designed KH-35 missile that has a range of 200 miles and can be launched from truck-based platforms. There was no independent confirmation of the type of weapons used.
“It’s a hugely important military event and the biggest defeat of the Russian Navy since World War II," Ukraine’s presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych wrote on social media. The alleged sinking of the cruiser, he added, is particularly important because Moskva is Russian for Moscow, and because it would be the biggest warship by tonnage sunk since 1945.
Ukraine’s demonstrated ability to hit Russian warships makes it much harder, if not outright impossible, for Moscow to launch an amphibious assault on Odessa, Ukraine’s main port, military analysts say.
Ukraine last month successfully hit another Russian warship, the large landing ship Saratov, in a missile attack on the occupied Azov Sea port of Berdyansk. That ship caught fire and sank, according to satellite images, with the attack frustrating Russia’s plans to use Berdyansk as a logistics hub for its military offensive in southeastern Ukraine. Russia never officially acknowledged that attack.
The claimed attack on the Moskva on Wednesday night would represent the first time that a Russian warship at sea was hit by Ukraine’s defenders, a strike that could change how the rest of the Russian navy operates in the Black Sea. The U.K. and other countries have recently promised to bolster Ukraine’s coastal defenses with additional antiship missile capabilities.
The Moskva led the Russian naval group that seized Ukraine’s Snake Island at the beginning of the war. According to Kyiv, its Ukrainian defenders refused an ultimatum to surrender, broadcasting the reply that is now emblazoned on countless billboards across Ukraine and has become a symbol of the country’s resistance: “Russian military ship, go screw yourself." Moscow disputes this version of events and says the Ukrainian troops on the island surrendered.
The claimed strike on the Moskva came as Russian and Ukrainian forces exchanged artillery fire in the country’s east after Moscow’s attempt to take the capital, Kyiv, failed. Russian President Vladimir Putin said this week that peace talks with Kyiv had reached a dead end.
Russia is redeploying troops from around the Kyiv area to southern and eastern Ukraine, where it made early gains in the first weeks of the invasion. Ukraine has used the lull in fighting to boost appeals to the West for more weapons and sanctions on Russia as several European leaders visited Kyiv on Wednesday.
The Biden administration said Wednesday it would expand the intelligence it is providing to Ukraine’s forces and send $800 million in additional weapons to Kyiv, including artillery, armored personnel carriers and helicopters, to help Ukrainian forces hold off what is expected to be a major Russian offensive in the eastern part of the country.
In a video posted on Twitter Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged leaders around the world to supply his country with more weapons to stop Russian forces.
“We need heavy artillery, armored vehicles, air defense systems and combat aircrafts. Anything to repel Russian forces and stop their war crimes," Mr. Zelensky said.
Russia late on Wednesday said it had taken control of the sea port in Mariupol; Ukraine hasn’t confirmed the move. Russia’s Defense Ministry also warned that any Ukrainian attacks against objects on Russian territory would be met with Russian strikes against “centers of decision-making" in cities including Kyiv.
Russian troops shelled civilian targets in the northeastern city of Kharkiv and the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, which has become a center for refugees from Mariupol, Ukraine’s General Staff said.
Russian focus on Mariupol has remained steady as forces have worked to establish full control over the city to establish a land corridor from occupied regions in the east to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Earlier this week troop movements in the city centered on Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade, the fate of which was unclear after conflicting accounts between officials in Moscow and Kyiv.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said the unit had managed to break out of Russian encirclement in the city to join another Ukrainian unit, the Azov regiment, which has been fighting off Russian attacks on Azovstal for weeks. Ukrainian media on Tuesday cited an unnamed officer of the brigade as saying that several hundred of its members had managed to escape.
In a post to its Facebook page on April 11, the brigade said it had all but run out of ammunition despite promises from officials and was collapsing under the strain of Russia’s offensive.
On Wednesday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said 1,026 service members of the brigade, including 162 officers, had surrendered to Russian forces. Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said 151 wounded servicemen had been taken to the Mariupol city hospital.
Gen. Konashenkov also said that Russian aviation had struck 46 military targets Tuesday, including a radar station near the village of Borovoe in the Kharkiv region and two Ukrainian weapons depots in the Zhytomyr and Kyiv regions. He said four Ukrainian helicopters had been destroyed at a military airfield in the Poltava region in the eastern part of the country.
After authorities in Kyiv said they are investigating allegations that Russia used chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops in Mariupol, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said the U.S. was also looking into these accusations.
“This is a scenario we have been concerned about for some time and repeatedly warned the world about," said Ambassador Michael Carpenter. “We must now urgently gather the evidence to ensure there is accountability for what could well be another war crime in Ukraine."
The Russian government hasn’t commented publicly about the alleged use of chemical weapons in Mariupol.
International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan met with Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova on Wednesday in Kyiv, where the two discussed closer coordination to investigate potential war crimes.
The OSCE released a report Wednesday saying that those who ordered and carried out attacks on a maternity hospital and a theater being used as a bomb shelter were guilty of such crimes.
“Violations concerning even the most fundamental human rights…have been committed, mostly in the areas under the effective control of Russia or entities under overall control of Russia," the report said. The Austria-based security organization added that some violations have been found on the Ukrainian side, but that violations committed by the Russians were more extreme and widespread.
—Matthew Walls and Matthew Luxmoore contributed to this article.
