The US Department of Defense (Pentagon) made a statement regarding the Russian cruiser ship Moscow, which Ukraine claims to have hit with a Neptune missile. Pentagon Spokesman John Kirby stated that there was at least one explosion on the Russian cruiser ship and they evaluated it as a fairly large explosion that caused great damage to the ship, “We are not entirely sure what happened here.”
“SHIP AT NAVIGATION”
Noting that Moscow is still at sea, Kriby stated that the ship is underway and said, “We evaluate that the ship can chart its own path and it does it. Now we think it’s going more eastward. “We think it will probably dock in Sevastopol for repairs, but we don’t know exactly what caused it (the explosion),” he said.
Expressing that the cruiser in question was with several Russian warships about 96 kilometers south of Odessa, Kirby said, “The explosion was so big that we received signs that other navy ships around it were trying to come to its aid. But this was not needed.”
“THEY HAD TO CHOOSE BETWEEN TWO STORIES”
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, on the other hand, reminded that Moscow is Russia’s flagship and stated that Russia had to admit that the ship was badly damaged. “They had to choose between the two stories,” Sullivan said. The first story is that it was just incompetence, the other is that they were hacked. It’s not a good outcome for either of them,” he said.
“The ammunition on the Moscow cruiser exploded as a result of the fire”
In the statement made by the Russian Ministry of Defense, the expressions “The ammunition on the Moscow cruiser exploded as a result of the fire. The ship was seriously damaged. All the crew were evacuated. The cause of the fire is being investigated.”
UKRAINE ANNOUNCED IT HAS ATTACKED THE MOSCOW CRUSHER
Aleksey Arestovich, Advisor to the Presidential Office of Ukraine last night, said in a statement, “The ship with a crew of 510, called Moscow, besieging Snake Island, was hit.”
Odessa Governor Maksim Marchenko said, “The ship named Moscow went to the place where our soldiers on the Snake Island were expelled. The rockets named Neptune caused heavy damage to the Russian ship.”
IT WAS THE AGENDA IN THE FIRST DAYS OF THE WAR
The cruiser Moscow came to the fore when it was used in the attack on the Snake Island off the Danube Delta in the Black Sea, in the first days of Russia’s attack on Ukraine on February 24. While the Ukrainian soldiers on the island did not surrender, he called on the Russian army to “go to hell”.
The 186-metre-long flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, Moscow, entered service in the early 1980s. When she was the lead ship of the Soviet navy’s Project 1164 Atlant class, she was first called the Slava she. But later her name was changed to “Moscow” she. The battleship’s main armament is known as the P-1000 Vulcan anti-ship missiles. The cruiser, which became the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet in 2000, played a key role in Russia’s military operation in Syria in 2015. (UAV)