The sinking of the Russian cruiser “Moscow” dealt a serious blow to the Kremlin fleet in the Black Sea and offered a major victory for public relations of Ukrainian forces.
The warship that sank on Thursday after Ukrainian and US officials said it was hit by two Neptune missiles, exploded and caught fire – was the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and one of its most visible weapons in the attack on Ukraine .
Significance is not lost for Ukrainians, who quickly began to use the incident in videos and images posted on social media. But experts are divided over whether the sinking of the ship could reverse the course of the war.
“If they start losing their fleet during this war before the war is over, the impact on their long-term strategy will be huge,” the retired brig said. Gen. Kevin Ryan, a former U.S. defense attaché in Russia who is now a senior fellow at the Belfer Center at Harvard University.
Ryan noted that the Russian fleet has operated approximately 12-24 ships in the Black Sea since the invasion, 11 of which are about the same size as the Moscow. The loss of even one of these ships reduces the power of Moscow’s navy in the Black Sea by approximately 10 percent, he said.
Russia is also unlikely to be able to quickly replace Moscow, which can carry up to 500 sailors, as it takes them a long time to repair and re-equip ships. “They’re known to be bad at this,” Ryan said.
Meanwhile, at the Institute for the Study of War, analysts see the incident as a “major propaganda victory for Ukraine” and are likely to damage Russia’s morale, but not a major change in the conflict.
As Russia uses the ship primarily to cover the air defenses of its Black Sea Fleet, rather than to strike at Ukrainian ground targets, its sinking “is unlikely to deal a decisive blow to Russian operations in general,” said analysts Mason Clark and Katerina Stepanenko. and George Barros wrote in their daily military briefing.
But they noted that the alleged Ukrainian strike could change Russian working models at sea, forcing them to deploy more air defenses in the area or withdraw their ships from positions near the Ukrainian coast.
The United States has already seen similar maneuvers, a senior defense official told reporters Thursday as other Russian ships in the northern Black Sea moved south after the blast.
It is difficult to determine whether Moscow will be a turning point due to the so far limited use of its Russian naval warships to strike at Ukrainian targets, instead using mainly aircraft and ground systems for such attacks.
The naval component of Moscow’s war is largely limited to two efforts: efforts to replenish and supply troops to the south and some cruise missile strikes against Ukraine, according to Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.
“As Moscow’s main mission was to defend Russian forces in the Black Sea,” this will affect their capabilities, certainly in the near future, “he said.
Whether this affects their naval capabilities in the long run is “simply not clear at this time,” Kirby added.
What is clear, however, is that sinking matters.
“Moscow” was the first major surface fighter sunk by enemy action in 40 years since the Falklands War in 1982, when the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano sank after being torpedoed by a British nuclear submarine.
It is also a widely known ship due to its prominence at the beginning of the invasion, when it told Ukrainian troops on Snake Island to surrender just to be told “yes”. The moment was widespread as a cohesive cry and an ode to the Ukrainian resistance.
Ukrainian authorities have already begun mocking the social media sinking, with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s adviser Alexei Arestovich tweeting a video Thursday claiming it depicted the spot where Moscow was hit by Ukrainian missiles.
“The flagship of the Russian Navy” Moscow “carried out a negative operation on the surface in the area of this island, where he was told to leave. Where is Moscow? It sank. ”
And the county’s defense minister tweeted on Friday that the ship was already a “decent place to dive.”
“The flagship Russian warship is a worthy place to dive. We already have another place to dive in the Black Sea. We will definitely visit the remains after our victory in the war. [By the way]I already have 300 dives, “tweeted Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexei Reznikov, along with a photo of him diving into the sea.
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The destruction of the ship could also affect Russia’s morale and raise new doubts about Russia’s catastrophic invasion of Ukraine, according to Clark, Stepanenko and Baros.
“The Kremlin, on the other hand, will struggle to explain the loss of one of the most important ships in the Russian navy,” they wrote. “Both explanations for the sinking of the Moscow show possible Russian shortcomings – either poor air defenses or incredibly weak procedures for safety and damage control of the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet.”
But it could also intensify the Kremlin’s attacks on Ukraine. Russia’s Defense Ministry warned on Friday that it would increase strikes in response to strikes on Moscow’s assets – although it continues to deny the ship was successfully attacked.
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