A senior Pentagon official said Friday that the Russian cruiser Moskva was sunk by two Ukrainian missiles, stressing it was a “major blow” to Russia.
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“We estimate that they hit it with two Neptunes,” the senior official, who asked not to be identified, told a few reporters, thus denying the Moscow version claiming that its main location in the Ukrainian theater was “severely damaged by a fire.”
The senior official, however, did not confirm the information that the Ukrainian military distracted the Moskva defense with a drone on one side of the ship while the Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missiles were equivalent to the French Exocet. The Navy, she was hitting him from the other side.
He added, “We believe that there are casualties, but it is difficult to estimate the number,” noting that the United States had noticed survivors who were picked up by other Russian ships in the vicinity.
Russia, which has not officially recognized that its main fleet in the Black Sea was sunk by Ukrainian missiles, said the crew had been evacuated.
“It’s a big hit, symbolically,” he added. But above all, the loss of the Moskva, one of the three Slava-class cruisers available to Russia, “creates a vacuum in terms of military capabilities” in southern Ukraine, where President Vladimir Putin has decided to focus his next offensive.
He explained that according to the Montreux Convention, “Turkey does not allow warships to enter the Black Sea, and therefore (the Russians) will not be able to replace it with another ship of the Slava class.”
Ankara controls access to the Black Sea through the 1936 Treaty of Montreux, which guarantees freedom of movement over the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, but gives it the right to block warships in the strait in times of conflict, unless they have to turn back. to their bases.
The sinking of the Moskva could prompt the Russian Navy to show more caution and less commitment in the Ukrainian theater, a senior Pentagon official has estimated.
