1/ THE SINKING OF MOSKVA, PART 3: After being struck by Ukrainian missiles on 13 April, the Russian missile cruiser Moskva was abandoned and left to drift burning overnight. This thread tells the story of the ship's final hours, and what happened next. ⬇️ 
2/ These threads are based on a newly published dossier compiled by Dmitry Shkrebets, the father of a conscript sailor who died in the attack on Moskva. For part 1, describing events leading up to the missile strikes, see the thread below.
https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1918190255271715122
3/ Part 2 describes how the crew tried to save the ship after two Ukrainian Neptune missiles struck it at 14:20 on 13 April.
https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1918371539558515002
4/ On the morning of 14 April, the tugboat Shakhter arrived on the scene with Admiral Essen, Admiral Makarov and Epron already there. A helicopter survey of Moskva reported that the cruiser was still on fire, with explosions continuing within the ship's interior.
5/ A photograph of the sinking Moskva and the short video below were recorded on 14 April, with Shakhter visible in the background of the video. They both show how severely damaged Moskva was by this point.
https://x.com/RALee85/status/1515962198488625152
6/ Flames are still visible coming out of the portholes in compartments 7 to 10. Soot stains above portholes near the stern show the extent of uncontrolled smoke, while a crack is visible near an aft torpedo tube. The deck above the S-300F missile room has sagged downwards.
7/ The missile room is one of the largest spaces in a Slava-class cruiser like Moskva and stretches across the ship's full width. It's occupied by several revolver-style S-300F missile tubes. It's marked in the diagram here as 'cellar no. 6', located above compartments 11 and 12.
8/ The deck above the missile room had buckled across the entire width of the ship – a distance of 20.8 meters. This point was between the site of the two missile impacts, with the damage likely caused by the ship flexing after the explosions.
9/ A 2.5 meter crack is visible on the starboard side, extending from the main deck to below the waterline and running straight through a porthole. It would have allowed water to enter the ship – though probably not in sufficient quantities to cause the sinking by itself.
10/ The missile holes were underwater by this time. Further water ingress is likely to have come from open portholes. The crew members trapped in the central compartments after the attack had to open the portholes to escape, but could not have closed them afterwards.
11/ The ship is also visibly settling by the stern. Skhrebets writes that this was because the missile room was progressively flooding. He comments that water likely entered either from the engine room or from the missile hole at the junction of compartments 13 and 14.
12/ Despite the damage, it was decided that an attempt would be made to tow Moskva to Sevastopol, 210 km away. A tow line was attached but was abandoned late on 14 April after it was found that the tow could proceed no faster than 2 knots – a 57-hour voyage to Sevastopol.
13/ At 20:00, Shkrebets reports, "the cruiser Moskva lost stability... capsized on its left side and sank with a trim by the stern." There was no final explosion, as some erroneously suggested at the time. She may have been destabilised by the flooding of the S-300F missile room.
14/ Although many speculated at the time that the direct cause of the sinking was the explosion of ammunition aboard, according to Shkrebets the only ammunition that definitely exploded was the stockpile of 30 mm shells in a storage room on the upper deck.
15/ It's likely that the sinking was caused by water entering through holes caused by the missile impacts and fire-caused hull deformation. Shkrebets writes that using the bilge pumps to remove excess water failed, and the only large pump aboard broke down after 10 minutes.
16/ Shkrebets speculates that Moskva was deliberately sunk to spare the Russian Navy the embarassment of bringing it to shore in a burned-out condition. This seems unlikely, as having the ship sunk was undoubtedly far more embarassing.
17/ It also contradicts Shkrebets' own statement that "in Sevastopol they actually prepared the Northern Dock for it (located in Dock Bay, on the Northern Side)." If this was done, it was hardly consistent with an intention to deliberately sink the ship.
18/ Two days after the sinking, many of the surviving crew of Moskva were paraded in Sevastopol (excepting the badly wounded, of whom there appear to have been many). This caused a lot of discontent among the sailors, according to Shkrebets:
19/ "When the remaining crew of the cruiser Moskva was placed in the Kazachka (1472nd Naval Clinical Hospital in Sevastopol) they were forced to prepare dress uniforms for the arrival of the commander-in-chief.
The sailors began to express their dissatisfaction with this show.
The sailors began to express their dissatisfaction with this show.
20/ "They were pulled out of fire and water, many with burnt and frostbitten limbs — [and] were a hair's breadth from death (in the worst case scenario).
And they decided to arrange a military parade for them."
And they decided to arrange a military parade for them."
21/ The Russian Ministry of Defence subsequently attempted to carry out a years-long cover-up of who and how many had died in the sinking. Families of missing crew members who posted messages of mourning on social media were told to take them down.
22/ Even now, it's not clear how many died. Officially, one man died and and 27 were listed as missing, while 396 were rescued. 17 of the 27 were later declared dead by a court. A memorial listing 20 fatalities was unveilled in Sevastopol in April 2024.
https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1781226815119323210
23/ TO BE CONTINUED: lessons and reflections from the sinking of Moskva.
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