The main news for yesterday – the flagman of the Black Sea Fleet, the guided missile cruiser “Moscow” was sunk by Ukraine.
It’s an outstanding event by any standard from purely military to the propagandist one.
We’ll talk about it today.
Since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war the most obvious reference for people who know history became the Russo-Japanese war.
With all the banality of the historical parallels everything coincides even in detail.
The government is losing support and decides to perform “a small and victorious war”,
a war against the weaker opponent which becomes a disaster.
How do we know that before the war Putin was doing very poorly in terms of public support?
There is a very simple fact – in the autumn the ruling power lost the elections to the political prisoner in Moscow.
If it was not for electronic elections, the candidates supported by the Smart elections of Alexey Navalny
could take 8 Moscow districts out of 15 during the elections to the State Duma.
With all this administrative mobilization and direct bribes to the voters through social payments before the elections,
with all the incomparability of resources, non-admissions and provocations, the candidates supported not even by Navalny himself but by his team,
took the capital of Russia from the electoral point of view.
On the federal level the situation is even worse –
the results purified from add-ups show that the biggest parliament party is the Communist party.
And it’s not because the Russian society signed into the International all of a sudden,
but because the Communist party is not the United Russia.
Yes, the massive fraud helped them to hide that the protest elections won.
Formally the places were received but it didn’t make the situation better.
The power-party (that is to say Vladimir Putin) has lost the majority of supporters and lost Moscow to imprisoned Navalny.
Yes, the bombers don’t run across Moscow like they did in the beginning of the 20th century.
The governor or the minister post is not punishable by death but the antagonism between the society and the government
and the need to send the authorities to hell whenever possible is obvious when it comes to any electoral event, even severely protected.
The only thing that couldn’t have been in this war (which made it different from the Russo-Japanese war) is that there could be no Tsushima.
There couldn’t have been any huge and bitter naval defeat.
Just because the Ukrainian navy is really small and intended just for the coastal security.
The biggest ship, the only frigate in Ukraine’s disposal was “Getman Sagaydachny”
and it was sunk during the first days of war to prevent it from being captured.
The rest of the fleet is totally unprepared for big naval battles with the Black Sea Fleet of Russia which has everything possible –
from cruisers and frigates to submarines.
It looked like that while the Russian army was stuck and dying in Ukraine,
the Black Sea Fleet could feel safe as they had no matching opponent.
But it turned out to be quite different.
We, obviously, underestimated the depth of degradation of the Russian Armed Forces.
In the night on Thursday the Ukrainian sources announced that the cruiser “Moscow”, the flagman of the Black Sea Fleet,
was destroyed by two anti-ship missiles Neptun while the UAV Bairaktar was distracting the radar system.
According to the Ukrainian side the ammunition on “Moscow” blew up and the ship sank.
In the afternoon the Ministry for Defense said that there was a fire on the cruiser, which was localized,
there was no open fire and the explosions of ammunition stopped.
According to the Ministry for Defense the crew was evacuated, and “Moscow” was still buoyant, and it would be pulled to the port.
They didn’t say anything about the cause or if there were anyone dead or injured among the crew.
There could be 500-700 people on board.
The press secretary of Pentagon John Kirby said later that according to the American intelligence data “Moscow” was still buoyant and returning to Sevastopol on its own.
The loss of the cruiser “Moscow” is a historic event.
The flagman of the Russian fleet is being wrecked during military actions for the first time since the battle
in the Tsushima Strait during the Russo-Japanese war at the beginning of the 20th century.
And if we compare it to the world’s history, we’ll see that it’s the biggest military fleet loss since 1982
when the British submarine sank the Argentine cruiser “General Belgrano”.
Yes, we don’t have any confirmation yet that what happened to “Moscow” is the result of Ukrainian efforts.
But if we discuss the causes, this is the situation when both variants are bad.
If there was a fire on the flagman ship because of safety code violation or technical issue, then the competency of the commandeers is very questionable.
If it was attacked by the missiles and UAV – it’s a failure indeed.
It’s the 50th day of war.
The Russian military announced long ago that no Ukrainian air defense and aviation exist.
And here we go.
Like the recent attack of helicopters at the oil base in Belgorod, it’s a very serious attack which shows us the depth of the problems Putin’s army has in Ukraine.
The guard’s missile cruiser “Moscow” is a very important ship for the Black Sea Fleet.
It was built in the end of 70s as a head ship of “Atlant” project.
They had to build 10 ships like this but the USSR had no money and they finished just 3 of them.
“Varyag” became the flagman of the Pacific Fleet,
“Marshal Ustinov” is a part of the Northern Fleet,
and “Moscow” is (or was) the flagman of the Black Sea Fleet.
It was one of the biggest military ships in the Russian fleet.
The ”Atlant” project ships are designed to kill aircraft carriers.
It was expected that in case of war with the US (the USSR was actively preparing for this war) they had to disable aircraft carriers which were the main hitting power of the American Fleet.
Because of that “Moscow” was equipped by 16 missile launсhers of anti-ship system “Vulcan”, torpedoes, artillery installations, a Ka-27 helicopter,
as well as a whole bunch of anti-aircraft complexes designed to combat air targets, which is logical, because there are aircrafts on enemy aircraft carriers.
The biggest brilliant in this bunch is C-300 “Fort”, the naval variant of a C-300 complex.
It can hit both aircrafts and cruise missiles.
To detect them there was radar equipment on “Moscow”.
Recently, in 2020 the cruiser underwent scheduled maintenance and had to work for 20 more years – up to 2040!
“Moscow” participated in all international conflicts of Putin’s Russia.
It was responsible for naval blockade of the coast during the Russian-Georgian war.
It participated in the Syrian war and was given a Nakhimov order for this.
But of course, the thing is not only in its military significance.
Like any flagman, “Moscow” also had representative functions.
Many times, it had to receive the highest delegations.
In 1989 “Moscow” accompanied the Presidents of the USSR and the US, Gorbachev and Bush-senior during their meeting in Malta.
In 1990 there was an international conference on nuclear ammunition control on the ship.
с In 2000 Vladimir Putin and the Ukrainian leader Leonid Kuchma attended the flagman of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
In 2014 “Moscow” ensured the security of the Olympic games in Sochi.
he loss of such a ship is a very serious loss for public image, especially in the situation when your opponent has no fleet
at all and you announced that their aviation was destroyed several weeks ago.
In this war the main task for “Moscow” was to ensure security of landing force transfer by sea.
Mostly, in Berdyansk and in the future in Mariupol after it’s being taken by the Russian troops.
It was the only ship in the Black Sea Fleet with a C-300 complex on its board.
It means the others can be easily attacked by the aviation and the missiles.
But the main thing the cruiser is famous for during this war with Ukraine is its participation
in the seizure of the Snake Island in the Black Sea, where the main meme of these events was born.
They offered the board guards to surrender,
but they sent the Russian military ship to hell (or even to a less decent destination).
The Snake Island, I’m a Russian ship.
I repeat - I suggest you lay down your weapons.
Otherwise, we’ll attack you.
Do you understand me? Copy.
Russian ship, go to hell!!!
Like it was with the helicopter attack of the Belgorod oil storages,
the flagman wreckage of one of four fleets in Russia is covered as much as if some tourist on a wave runner crashed.
Well, the country without any naval forces killed the flagman of the Black Sea Fleet – no big deal.
Let’s better discuss that Biden’s rating renewed historical minimum.
It’s not a joke – it’s the main piece of news on the First channel when the video was made.
We’ve learned the missile cruiser “Moscow” sank while being pulled to the port.
As the Ministry for Defense stated, it happened during the storm.
Because of the serious damage to its body, the ship lost its stability,
tilted to the side and couldn’t regain the balance.
I’ll remind you that earlier our authority stated that the fire started on the ship and the ammunition exploded.
After the fire was taken under control, the cruiser was still buoyant.
According to our data the crew was evacuated to the other ships of the Black Sea Fleet.
With all that they are trying to hide a very bitter military defeat.
To sink a missile cruiser is not as easy as to attack a maternity center in Mariupol.
It’s a huge military win for Ukraine and such a bitter blow for Russia’s public image
that propaganda doesn’t even know what to do with it.
There’s no way out of this situation.
First, the official version about “inflammation” on board with the explosion of ammunition afterwards sounds unreal
during the war even to the simplest audience.
Secondly, it’s hardly better than the Ukrainian version – what kind of cruisers do you have if they set themselves on fire just like that?
War is not a simple business indeed.
Except for the nominal list of forces, losses and achievements, except for the strategy,
weapons and technologies, there is always something intangible in it that stretches from the depths of centuries.
"The spirit of the troop," for example.
Even the Roman authors wrote about it.
But even we without any explanation can understand
that except for training and ammunition the motivation is important for soldiers.
The soldier fighting for his own land and participating in a real Patriotic war is quite different
from the soldier who doesn’t understand where and why he is here.
One more intangible but very clear thing is that war becomes imprinted in history.
There are victorious wars, or bitter and drastic defeats, there are “weird wars”
when people fight for a long time, many people die and in the end they agree to disagree.
But also, there are shameful wars.
There are wars everybody is trying to forget about.
The Crimean war was like this. It uncovered all the vices and crimes of Nicolas’ Russia.
The Soviet-Finnish war was like this, when the country with a population
less than in Moscow gave the huge Red Army such a beatdown that they had to settle for peace.
The Chechnya war was like this, when the country couldn’t manage with its one single region.
For each terrifying piece of news, news about atrocities on the occupied territory,
the shameful war brings news which could be called “uneasy” at the very least.
Like, how could it happen? Ok, there’s corruption. Ok, there is incompetency.
how so? What are those 15 landings to Chernobayevka?
But how could this happen? How could you blow the cruiser to the country with no fleet?
I don’t want to diminish the Ukrainians’ victory. It’s a win, and a spectacular one.
But on the other hand, it uncovers such a shame that even propaganda has nothing else to do
but to forget that there was a missile cruiser once in the Black Sea Fleet.
Today, when the war is going on for 2 months, thousands of people died, the Russian army suffered huge losses,
I’d like to suggest to the viewers to think once again – why did they start all of this?
Why did they kill Russian-speaking civilians?
Why and for what reason did the Russian soldiers die?
Why did they take Kherson?
The stolen TV sets in the suburbs of Kyiv are easy to understand but the price for them is too high.
It was easier to rob a shop in Moscow with the army’s help
There should have been some goals for this operation. What are they?
I think it might be useful to ask those people who support this war about this.
If there is someone left who still supports this war.
Till tomorrow! By the way...
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