Warships from Russia’s Black Sea Fleet (BSF) are now keeping a healthy distance of at least two hundred kilometers from Ukraine’s southern shore to avoid anti-ship missiles like the ones that sank the fleet flagship Moskva. Meanwhile, the senior Ukraine Armed Forces (UAF) officer responsible for the blow received a spot promotion to admiral, official statements and news reports said on Tuesday, April 19.
Two UAF Neptune anti-ship missiles fired from Ukraine’s Odesa region on April 13 set the Moskva afire and forced the crew to abandon ship. She sank the next day, reportedly with hundreds of sailors lost. A command and control platform with powerful anti-aircraft weapons, the Moskva had been the BSF’s biggest warship.
RF state media claimed an explosion on board, not UAF weapons, caused the disaster. Nonetheless, the remaining vessels in the BSF operational flotilla are no longer operating close to shore, and since the Moskva’s destruction are staying well beyond the Neptune missile’s 170-km. operational range, said Ukraine’s Joint Forces South (JFS) command said in a statement. Major Ukrainian news platforms like censor.net.ua confirmed the report. The Moskva according to UAF statements had been some 65 km. from potential UAF firing positions when she was hit.
Rear Admiral Oleksiy Neizhpapa, commander of Ukraine’s navy, was promoted to the rank of Vice Admiral, for the “brilliant operation” leading to the Moskva’s sinking, a statement from President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office said.
According to unconfirmed news and social media reports, UAF naval commanders used a Bayraktar drone to distract the attention of the Moskva’s air defense equipment operators long enough to allow the two Neptune missiles to hit the Russian cruiser by surprise. UAF military officials have declined to discuss tactics used against RF forces.
Currently, five other RF warships still present at sea could launch as many as 36 cruise missiles at inland targets, said Oleksandr Motuzniak, a Defense Ministry spokesman, in a statement. Since mid-March the Kremlin has increasingly turned to long-range weapons like cruise missiles to attack infrastructure and civilian targets in Ukraine, he said.
After the Kremlin’s 24 Feb. invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv has slowly built up air defense capacity to shoot down some of the RF cruise missiles, but has mostly been unable to attack warships firing the missiles, because they are outside the range of practically all UAF weapons systems. Anti-ship weapons capable of reaching RF warships carrying missiles to bombard Ukrainian homes and businesses have long been near the top of a list of heavy weapons Ukrainian officials have said the country badly needs to defend itself from Moscow’s attacks.
The US and Britain have discussed sending Ukraine anti-ship missiles, and, according to scattered news reports last week, US President Joe Biden gave go ahead instructions to send the weapons as part of the latest American arms assistance package to Ukraine. According to the Pentagon US Air Force jets already are delivering the equipment to airfields in Poland, however, there been no news reports of US-supplied anti-ship missiles actually reaching Ukraine.
