1/ Three years on from the sinking of the cruiser Moskva, a leaked report indicates that the warship was in a 'deplorable' condition when it left Sevastopol for the last time. Commentators suggest it may have had its radars wrongly painted with a radio-opaque paint. ⬇️
2/ The video above shows the ship's departure from Sevastopol on 10 April 2022. Exactly two months earlier, on 10 February 2022, its captain Anton Valerievich Kuprin wrote a "Reference Report on the Status of the Guided Missile Cruiser 'Moskva'", which has been leaked.
3/ The report is among a set of materials on the ship and its sinking which has been collected by Dmitry Shkrebets, the father of one of the sailors who died on the Moskva, which was the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
4/ He comments: "We can conclude that the ship's performance characteristics and systems were in a deplorable state, and not only could the Flagship not take part in the Special Military Operation with such problems, but even an ordinary exit to sea could be fraught with danger."
5/ Kuprin's report states that "The departments [on board the ship] were not prepared, they are dirty, not well maintained. The organization of carrying out special duty has not been worked out." Navigational equipment was either not working or only in limited use.
6/ The onboard S-300F Fort anti-aircraft missile system could not lock onto targets and had faulty components, as did the Korvet target designation system, which also had misaligned antennas. Similar faults affected many other weapons systems, including the ship's cannons.
7/ When the MR-800 radar system was operating, it jammed the R-794-1 satellite communications system. The radiotechnical war unit had a long list of technical failures.
8/ Two of the ship's four turbogenerators had exceeded their service life and had been arbitrarily life-extended by 500 hours, a third was making strange noises, and a fourth was in such a poor condition that it was restricted for emergency use only.
9/ One of the main engines had a faulty cam clutch and was disconnected from the main shaft line, while the feed pipes to two of the auxiliary boiler units had been ruined by unrepaired corrosion.
10/ After the ship was hit by two Ukrainian missiles and was evacuated, the crew found that only a few of the inflatable boats were in working order. Prepackaged personal breathing devices were found to be inoperable due to missing components.
11/ The ship's condition seems to have been little improved since a NATO officer made a visit in 2012, the conclusions from which I reported in the thread below.
https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1515402324637798415
12/ In addition, the Russian Telegram channel 'Sea Power of the State' reports on rumours in the Russian Navy that the Moskva's radars had been painted with cheap anti-corrosion paint instead of the more expensive radar-transparent paint that was supposed to be used.
13/ "The electronic reconnaissance station is used to detect radiation from the radar and seeker heads of enemy ships, aircraft and missiles. Therefore, specific requirements for radio transparency are imposed on the paint used for the antenna caps of this system.
14/ "Let's look at the photo. Hull 011 is the "Varyag", you can see that the caps are white. The second photo is "Moskva" [hull 121]. 
15/ "From the stern, the photo is old, 2008, you can see that the antenna caps are painted with some other paint, not the ball paint with which the entire ship is painted. Why? Because. Here's a more recent photo of "Moskva".
16/ "Everything is completely covered. Of course, nothing can be said for sure, but this difference at the time raised questions among people involved in electronic reconnaissance ...
17/ "One of the components of many enamels, for example, glyphthalic or pentaphthalic enamels used to paint ship hulls above the waterline, include so-called siccatives, substances that accelerate drying. Often these are metal salts.
18/ "In turn, coatings for antenna fairings must be radio-transparent, and the presence of metals and their derivatives (salts, oxides) in them is not allowed. For example, acrylic paints form radio-transparent coatings." /end
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