Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ THE SINKING OF MOSKVA, PART 4: The Russian Black Sea flagship Moskva sank on 14 April 2022 after being hit by two Ukrainian missiles the day before, inflicting the Russian Navy's biggest loss in 80 years. This thread looks at possible lessons learned from the sinking. ⬇️

2/ 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/ Part 3 covers the ship's final hours on 14 April, and the immediate aftermath:

https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1918592097138962917

5/ Dmitry Shkrebets, the author of the account on which these threads are based, is understandably very angry with the long list of failings that led to the loss of Moskva and 28 of her crew. The casualties included his son Yegor, who was only a week from his 20th birthday.

6/ Among the failures that Shkrebets lists are:

🔺 Moskva sailed unescorted into Ukrainian missile range with faulty radars and weapons systems and without combat preparations;
🔺 The conscripts aboard her were sent illegally to a war zone outside of Russian territory;

7/ 🔺 The Russian Navy appears to have ignored the threat of Ukrainian cruise missile attacks in its mission planning;
🔺 Poorly maintained structures within the ship, such as ladders and gangways, disintegrated and blocked escape;

8/ 🔺 Fire suppression systems and pumps did not work properly;
🔺 Toxic smoke spread uncontrolled throughout the ship;
🔺 Gas masks did not work because they were decades old and components were long since life-expired;

9/ 🔺 Breathing apparatuses were unusable because they had been packaged without masks;
🔺 There was insufficient fire-fighting equipment on board.

(There were likely many other flaws, particularly compared to best practice in NATO navies.)

10/ As Shkrebets points out, these were the result of complacency, mismanagement and decades of lack of maintenance on the ship. If those problems could be so severe on Moskva, the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, he asks, how much worse is it elsewhere?

11/ The Ukrainians were admittedly extremely lucky. The first missile to hit caused critical damage and knocked out the ship's damage control facilities. It appears to have set fire to the ship's fuel supply almost immediately, filling Moskva with choking smoke.

12/ Skhrebets' account indicates that the second strike on the stern caused far less damage and the fire there was quickly extinguished. Had this been the only strike on Moskva, the ship was unlikely to have been lost.

13/ The Russians were somewhat lucky too, despite the loss of the ship. The 30 mm shells that exploded in the fire were probably the least destructive type of ammunition on Moskva. Each of the 16 huge Vulkan missiles contained 1.5 tons of kerosene and 490 kg of high explosive.

14/ As Shkrebets points out, "It was believed that just three P-1000 Vulkan missiles would be capable of sinking an aircraft carrier... [In the event of] detonation of the first four P-1000 Vulkan missiles [aboard Moskva], the front end of the ship would be torn off."

15/ Had either of the missiles struck a few meters away from their impact sites, they could have detonated multiple heavy weapons systems – P-1000s, S-300Fs (shown here in their launcher room, near the site of the second missile impact), or heavy torpedoes.

16/ According to Shkrebets, most of the crew would have died in the mess hall in the first missile impact if a scheduled meeting there had not been delayed by the mess hall staff failing to finish their lunch washing up on time.

17/ Assessing the reliability of Shkrebets' account is made more difficult by the lack of other sources. The Russian authorities very firmly suppressed any relatives or survivors who tried to give their version of events.

18/ However, his extremely detailed dossier indicates that he obtained a good deal of information directly from Moskva sailors and eyewitnesses, including some original documentation. He has been extraordinarily brave in defying the authorities to expose failures.

19/ His description of what happened on board is partly corroborated by the single photo and brief video that emerged from the sinking. The damage visible to Moskva matches what he says about the fire and other physical damage caused by the attack.

20/ Bearing these caveats in mind, it's worth reviewing was said by the Russians, Ukrainians and others at the time to assess its consistency with Shkrebets' version of events.

21/ The first Ukrainian account, which appeared on Facebook at 20:42, was mostly accurate: "The cruiser Moskva has just been hit by 2 Neptune missiles. It is standing [not sunk], burning. And there is a storm at sea. Tactical flooding is required, apparently."

22/ This was likely sourced from intercepted Russian radio signals, perhaps the call below, which was published by the Ukrainian military's Operational Command South on 15 May 2022.

23/ The Russian MOD said early on 14 April that a fire had caused ammunition to explode and that the ship had been seriously damaged. This was also mostly accurate, likely referring to the detonation of 30 mm ammunition, though they didn't say anything about then the cause.

24/ Later Russian statements said that the missile systems of the cruiser were undamaged, the fire was contained by sailors, and that efforts were underway to tow the ship to port. This was only partly true (in fact, the fire was never fully contained, according to Shkrebets.)

25/ The ship's sinking was said by the Russian MOD to have happened in "stormy seas", which Shkrebets says was untrue. At the time of the missile impacts and sinking, he says that wind speeds were between 4 and 10 knots, which would have only created small wavelets.

26/ There were also claims from foreign sources that survivors had been evacuated by Turkish or Romanian ships in the vicinity. These were clearly untrue; nothing has emerged to verify this, and Shkrebets is clear that only Russian ships were involved.

27/ Casualty reports from foreign sources were clearly heavily exaggerated. Shkrebets does not contradict the official Russian figures, which were far lower than those given by others. Initial claims of hundreds of fatalities were never corroborated.

28/ An eyewitness report at the time claimed that around 200 men, or nearly half the crew, were in hospitals in Sevastopol, most likely suffering from smoke inhalation. This is consistent with about only 100-140 men appearing in the 16 April 2022 parade in Sevastopol.

29/ The remaining men missing from the parade were likely among the fatalities. Moskva's captain Anton Kuprin survived the attack, as did all of the senior officers. The most senior officer known to have died was a captain-lieutenant (equivalent to a US Navy lieutenant).

30/ The Moskva memorial in Sevastopol records that the publicly disclosed fatalities were aged between 18 and 61 years old. Three-quarters were under 24 years of age, which suggests that conscripts were disproportionately represented among the dead.

31/ The following lists all of the names recorded on the Moskva memorial. Two are recorded as having died in June 2022, presumably as a result of lingering injuries:

- Captain-Lieutenant Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Geplock

- Lieutenant Maxim Alexandrovich Naumkin

32/ - Senior Michman [=chief petty officer] Dmitry Alexandrovich Cheremiskin

- Senior Michman Ivan Leonidovich Vakhrushev

- Fuel Foreman Takhir Zamirovich Afashagov

33/ Privates

- Vladislav Alexandrovich Dorokhin [died 21/06/2022]
- Akim Aleksandrovich Kozyr
- Sergei Sergeevich Pozdnyakov
- Artem Sergeevich Pustovet
- Leonid Viktorovich Savin
- Yegor Dmitrievich Shkrebets
- Georgy Khayyamovich Shakuro

34/ Senior sailors

- Vitaly Vladimirovich Begersky
- Anton Konstantinovich Fedotov [died 25/06/2022]
- Danil Mikhailovich Gerok
- Daniil Eduardovich Kitaev
- Vladimir Alekseevich Kovalev

35/ Sailors

- Pavel Alekseevich Efimov
- Ivan Vladimirovich Frantin
- Ilya Alekseevich Shcherbina
- Viktor Yurievich Shirinkin

36/ TO BE CONTINUED: The capture of Snake Island and Moskva's Black Sea missions before the sinking.