Putin has launched a major salvage operation to the wreck of the downed Black Sea Fleet flagship to secure military secrets including coding devices, unexploded missiles, and possibly even attempt to bring the bodies of dead sailors back home, naval experts have claimed.
An eight-ship salvage flotilla including Kommuna, the world’s oldest active warship, and submarine has been sent to the site of the sunken Moskva 80 miles off the coast of Odessa from Sevastopol, the large naval base in Russia-annexed Crimea, according to a report by Forbes.
Military expert HI Sutton has suggested that Putin may be hoping to retrieve ‘cryptological materials – radios and keys indicating secret codes – as well as any weapons or logs that might be of interest to a foreign power’.
He explained that the sole purpose of the 315ft-long Kommuna, which was built 110 years ago for Tsar Nicholas II’s navy and served in the Imperial and Soviet navies during both world wars, is to recover sunken vessels and cargo after a shipwreck or other maritime casualty.
But since the Moskva is around 160ft under water, experts believe it is unlikely that Kommuna will attempt to salvage the entire wreck. A US defence official told Forbes: ‘That would be an enormous engineering task, to try to bring that ship up to the surface. We’ve seen no indication that they have shown any interest in doing that.’
The angry families of Russian servicemen desperately searching for their sons who they said served on the Moskva warship prior to its sinking have hit out at Kremlin ‘lies’ and ‘bullying’ after Putin had promised them they would not be sent to the warzone in Ukraine.
Some relatives have been warned they will not get financial ‘compensation’ for their loved-ones’ deaths if they go to the media. Despite this, brave Dmitry Shkrebets, father of Yegor Shkrebets, has launched a campaign to force out the truth about what happened to the warship – and their sons – faced with a wall of obfuscation from the Russian authorities. He told Current Times: ‘All the guilty should be punished for what they did. Or rather, what they didn’t do.’
It took the Russian military more than a week to acknowledge that one serviceman died and 27 dozen others were missing after the ship – one of its flagship cruisers – sank in the Black Sea, reportedly the result of a Ukrainian missiles strike.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said in its announcement on Friday the ship had been damaged by a fire, with 396 crew members evacuated. The ministry did not offer any explanation for its earlier claims that the full crew got off the vessel before it sank.
The loss of the Moskva, one of three missile cruisers of its kind in Russia’s fleet, was shrouded in mystery from the moment it was first reported early on April 14. Ukraine said it hit the ship with missiles. The Russian Defence Ministry would not acknowledge an attack, saying only that a fire broke out on the vessel after ammunition detonated, causing serious damage.
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