The Moskva, Russian flagship in the Black Sea, sank Thursday after being hit by a Ukrainian missile according to kyiv, due to an accidental fire according to Moscow, a major setback raising fears of an escalation of the conflict while Russia accuses the Ukraine to bomb villages on its soil.
“During the towing of the cruiser Moskva to the port of destination, the ship lost its stability due to hull damage sustained in the fire following the detonation of ammunition. In rough sea conditions, the ship sank,” the Russian Defense Ministry said Thursday evening.
He had previously indicated that the fire on board was “contained” and that the cruiser “kept its buoyancy”, while claiming to investigate the causes of the disaster.
The loss of this command ship is “a blow” to the Russian fleet in the region, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Thursday, with “consequences for their” combat capabilities, the ship being a ” key element in their efforts to establish naval dominance in the Black Sea”.
The Moskva “provided air cover for the other vessels during their operations, in particular the bombardment of the coast and the landing maneuvers”, detailed for his part the spokesman for the regional military administration of Odessa Sergei Bratchouk, on Telegram .
Whatever the circumstances of the sinking, it is one of Russia’s biggest setbacks and a major humiliation.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hit the nail on the head in his evening ritual video message by referring to Ukrainians as “those who showed that Russian ships can only go to the bottom”.
– “Genocide” –
During the night from Wednesday to Thursday, the Russian Ministry of Defense had admitted that this 186-meter-long missile ship had been “severely damaged” by a fire which caused the explosion of ammunition and that its crew of more than of 500 men had been evacuated.
The Ukrainian governor of the Odessa region, Maxime Marchenko, said for his part that the Ukrainian armed forces had struck the Moskva with Ukrainian-made Neptune cruise missiles, inflicting “significant damage”.
Military setbacks in Ukraine could prompt Russian President Vladimir Putin to resort to a tactical or low-power nuclear weapon in that country, William Burns, the head of the CIA, the main US intelligence agency, warned on Thursday.
But “we haven’t really seen any concrete signs like military deployments or measures that could heighten our concerns,” he insisted.
Translating into words the level of extreme hostility reached in this conflict, as well as the gravity of the atrocities attributed to Russian forces, the Ukrainian Parliament voted on Thursday a resolution qualifying the Russian offensive as “genocide”.
“Russia’s actions are aimed at the systematic and consistent annihilation of the Ukrainian people, depriving them of the right to self-determination and independent development”, explains the text.
– “Terrorist attacks” –
In return, Russia accused Ukraine of bombing Russian border villages.
The Russian Investigative Committee claimed that two Ukrainian helicopters ‘equipped with heavy weapons’ entered Russia and carried out ‘at least six strikes on apartment buildings in the village of Klimovo’, in the Bryansk region .
Seven people, including a baby, were injured “to varying degrees”, according to these Russian accusations, the validity of which is impossible to verify independently.
Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council rejected the claims, accusing Russian intelligence of carrying out “terrorist attacks” in the border region to fuel “anti-Ukrainian hysteria”.
Russia, whose announced massive offensive in the Donbass has still not started and which is struggling to take full control of Mariupol, a strategic port in the Sea of Azov, has threatened to strike “centers of decision-making ” in Kyiv.
“We are seeing sabotage attempts and strikes by Ukrainian forces on targets on the territory of the Russian Federation,” said Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry.
“If such events continue, strikes will be carried out by the Russian military on decision-making centers, including in kyiv, which the Russian military has refrained from doing so far,” he said. he warned.
President Zelensky has remained since the beginning of the war entrenched with his administration in the center of the capital, from where he has not ceased to demand from the West deliveries of heavy armaments which are lacking to resist the firepower of the Russians.
“Russia has brought thousands of tanks, artillery pieces and all sorts of heavy weapons to the region, simply hoping to crush our army,” said Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Thursday.
– “Charred” –
US President Joe Biden, who has refused to do so until now, acceded to the Ukrainian request on Wednesday, promising massive new military aid of $800 million, including armor and long-range guns.
His French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, challenged by Volodymyr Zelensky on his refusal to endorse the word “genocide” used by Joe Biden to justify his military aid, underlines for his part that “the States which consider that it is a genocide must by international conventions to intervene”. “Is that what people want? I don’t think so,” Macron commented.
It is in Mariupol (south-east) that could be recorded in the immediate future the heaviest human toll of this war. The Ukrainian authorities have mentioned some 20,000 dead.
Galina Vassilieva, 78, points to a nine-storey building completely burnt down there: “Look at our beautiful buildings!”, She exclaims. “People are burned inside,” says this retiree, queuing in front of a truck of pro-Russian separatists distributing humanitarian aid.
The martyred port city, which AFP was able to see during a press trip organized this week by the Russian army, suffered a deluge of fire, which ravaged the infrastructure and homes of the half-million of people who lived there when Vladimir Putin launched his offensive against Ukraine on February 24.
Today, after more than forty days, the fighting is confined to the vast industrial zone near the seaside, as Russian forces and their separatist allies in Donetsk have imposed and then gradually tightened their terrible siege.
The conquest of this city would allow the Russians to consolidate their territorial gains by linking the Donbass region, partly controlled by pro-Russian separatists since 2014, with Crimea annexed the same year.
Shelling also continues in the eastern part of Ukraine. According to the governor of the region, more than 500 civilians, including 24 children, have been killed in the Kharkiv region (northeast) since the start of the Russian invasion.
Analysts say Russian President Vladimir Putin, mired in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance, wants to secure a victory in Donbass ahead of the May 9 military parade in Red Square marking the Soviet victory over the Nazis in 1945.