Relatives of the crew of the Russian flagship sunk in the Sea of Azov criticize the secrecy about the fate of their relatives
The enigma around the sinking of the Moskva grows as the days go by since the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet sank on Thursday of last week. After the shipwreck, at least five families have publicly denounced the disappearance of their children, enrolled on the cruise, although there are many more who demand answers due to the fate of dozens of sailors about whom there are still large information gaps. The Kremlin has barely tiptoed over the main catastrophe of its Navy in the current Ukrainian war. Over the weekend, the Government reported that the Commander-in-Chief of the Black Sea Fleet met with an unknown number of sailors from the sunken cruiser in Sevastopol to thank them for their work and notify them of their transfer to other units. The only images show a long line of sailors lined up at the military base that is the headquarters of this fleet. Western analysts who have examined the photos confirm that it is a large group that would slightly exceed a hundred men. In the Moskva there were 514 troops.
After declaring in the hours after the incident that the entire crew was safe, the Government reported on Monday that there were actually two deaths. One of them has been identified as Andrei Tsyvov, a 19-year-old recruit, whose death confirmed the Ministry of Defense to her mother, Yulia Tsyvova, desperate after she had tried to contact her son for three days. “They didn’t tell me anything else, no information about when the funeral would be,” he told the British newspaper ‘The Guardian’.
Other close associates begin to consider that the official story about the end of the ‘Moskva’ “is a cynical lie” and demand answers from the Kremlin. Official secrecy doesn’t help. The authorities seem determined to keep the information about the sinking secret, which would include the list of possible victims. The ship was the jewel in the Russian crown in the Black Sea and its sinking has been a tremendous setback for Russia; so much so that President Vladimir Putin has not hesitated to renew air strikes on the outskirts of kyiv in apparent retaliation. The setback would undoubtedly increase if it became known that the shipwreck also constituted a great human tragedy.
Causes still in doubt
The origin of the shipwreck is also not too clear. There is only a short video and two photos of the Moskva after the incident, laying on the starboard side, with massive damage to its superstructure and a plume of smoke aft. The Pentagon and several international media grant signs of credibility that it is about the cruise. Other media are hesitant to go that far, given the extent of her disfigurement on her helmet.
The Ukrainian Army claims responsibility for the sinking and claims that it was achieved through two Neptune missiles, which managed to bypass the ship’s defenses through a diversionary operation with a drone. Russia, however, claims that an accidental fire on board and the explosion of the ammunition magazine caused the end of the Moskva, which sank while being towed to the port of Sevastopol.
Analysts who have studied these images say it is difficult to determine which version is the real thing. Only the United States has so far revalidated kyiv’s thesis, which has not overly celebrated what would be one of its great military successes in these almost two months of war. The damage presented by the ship is compatible with two missiles, but also with an accident in which it would have burned from the inside out, which could fit with a fire on board followed by the explosion of the ammunition. Then there are more extreme theses, such as the one that suggests that in one way or another the Kremlin would have allowed the Moskva to sink to avoid photos of the wrecked ship upon arrival in Sevastopol. Both Moscow and kyiv are enormously zealous to prevent the enemy from seeing the damage.
It so happens that the official data on the injured has not been provided either, although some witnesses affirm that 200 crew members would have been admitted to the Sebastopol hospital. Also this Tuesday the rumor began to emerge that there were at least 37 bodies. Loose data and rumors that fuel the pain and impatience of the relatives, who begin to compare this case with that of the Kursk, the submarine that sunk in 2000 and that took the lives of its 118 crew members. More than a week passed in which his relatives did not know anything about his fate. Vladimir Putin suffered a severe blow to his presidency there.
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