RUSSIA CONFIRMS 1 DEAD, 27 MISSING IN MISSILE CRUISER SINKING: RIA

A photo shared on social media and widely believed to show the Moskva on fire and listing badly.

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Sat 23 April 2022:

Russia’s defence ministry on Friday confirmed for the first time that the crew of the missile cruiser Moskva suffered casualties when it blew up and sank last week, a report from RIA news agency indicated.

Russia initially said all the ship’s crew were evacuated after an ammunition blast triggered by a fire ripped through the Moskva, the flagship of its Black Sea fleet.

“Attempts by the crew to extinguish the fire were not successful,” RIA quoted the defence ministry as saying.

“During the struggle to stabilize the ship, one serviceman died and another 27 crew members went missing. The remaining 396 members of the crew were evacuated.”

Ukraine says it hit the vessel with an anti-ship missile.

The ministry said that it has been providing assistance to the relatives of the deceased and the missing.

Russia acknowledged on April 14 that the Moskva had sunk, attributing the disaster to a fire that caused ammunition on the ship to detonate.

The ministry claimed that the entire crew of 500 was evacuated from the ship, which Ukraine and the United States said sank after Ukrainian forces hit the vessel on April 13 with at least one Neptune missile.

A senior Pentagon official said on April 15 that the loss of the ship was a “big blow” for Moscow. The official said then that the strike was believed to have caused casualties, but it was difficult to assess how many.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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