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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
1/ THE SINKING OF MOSKVA, PART 2: The sinking of the Russian Black Sea Fleet flagship on 13-14 April 2022 was the greatest loss for the Russian Navy since World War II. The father of one of the dead sailors has published an inside account of how it happened. ⬇️
2/ This thread describes Dmitry Shkrebets' account of how the crew tried to save Moskva after two Ukrainian Neptune missiles struck her starboard side at 14:20 on 13 April.
3/ The chaos and confusion aboard the ship after the missiles struck is captured in audio released by Ukraine in May 2022. A Moskva crewman can be heard radioing for help with emergency sirens blaring. "[This is] Moskva", he says, "two hull breaches below [sic] the waterline."
1/ A detailed inside account of the sinking of the Russian missile cruiser Moskva has been published. It describes how the ship was overwhelmed with fire and smoke, safety systems failed, interior structures collapsed and crewmen jumped out through portholes to save themselves.⬇️
2/ On the afternoon of 13 April 2022, Moskva was struck and set on fire by two Ukrainian Neptune missiles. A day later, the ship sank. Russian authorities said that 396 crew members had been evacuated, with one sailor killed and 27 missing.
3/ Dmitry Shkrebets, the father of one of the missing sailors, has compiled an extremely detailed dossier of the events that led up to the sinking and how the sinking itself took place. It includes survivors' first-hand accounts. The ship was in a very poor condition at the time.
1/ A wounded Russian soldier has recorded a nude video complaining that his commanders are "freaks who maim and kill our soldiers". He says that they use men as 'expendable material', inflicting huge casualties on their own side, and that medical facilities are terrible. ⬇️
2/ The unnamed soldier is currently a member of an assault battalion in the 1307th Guards Motorised Rifle Regiment (military unit 77860), which he says is a "bloody regiment" used as a penal unit for 'undesirables'.
3/ He joined the Russian army in March 2022 as a member of the BARS (Combat Army Reserve) and fought near Kharkiv in the early days of the war, receiving an award for bravery. Casualties were extremely high, with only 32 out of 500 men surviving. He was wounded himself.
1/ The career of a Russian UAV operator, as described by a Russian warblogger:
"A young man of about 25 years old is going to sign a contract, hoping to become a UAV operator. He has an engineering education and a couple of years of work experience after graduating."
2/ "He is shoved into assaults, without any discussion. They ignore his request to enroll him as a drone operator, they ignore his higher education. The training before the first battle is less than 14 days.
3/ "The guy ends up storming a populated area, where he receives a moderately severe wound to the leg (dropped from a copter).
A month later, slightly healed, he is returned to the regiment, where he is listened to and sent to a newly formed UAV platoon.
1/ A leaked order suggests that the Russian army is concerned about how many of its soldiers will leave once mobilisation and stop-loss orders have ended. It follows concerns expressed by Russian warbloggers that much of the army may quit after a ceasefire or peace deal. ⬇️
2/ The order, shown above, instructs commanders to "organise and conduct a survey of military personnel of all categories about their intentions (desires) to continue military service under contract after completing their military service, taking into account the proposed…
3/ …increase in salary (from 100 thousand rubles and above) and the expansion of the list of social guarantees provided (free travel to and from, basic leave for military personnel and their family members, increased monetary compensation for the rental of housing, etc.)."
1/ The Russian government has reportedly ordered hundreds of public sector employees in Moscow to give up their days off and watch the skies over the capital for Ukrainian drones during the 9 May Victory Day commemoration. ⬇️
2/ On 3 May 2023, a Ukrainian drone hit the Kremlin (shown in the video above). In an evident attempt to prevent a repeat, the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel reports that the authorities have "forced hundreds of public sector employees to patrol the streets around the clock...
3/ ... and watch the sky to watch out for UAVs. Employees of various state budget institutions and other organizations subordinate to the mayor's office have already been briefed, they have been divided into groups and have been given overtime schedules.