The Ukrainians Claim They Damaged A Russian Cruiser

A Ukrainian navy missile battery reportedly has struck the Russian navy cruiser Moskva off the coast of Odessa, a strategic port city on the Black Sea in southwest Ukraine.

Multiple Ukrainian government officials claimed Wednesday that a Neptune anti-ship battery, apparently hidden in or around Odessa, scored two hits on Moskva, setting the 612-foot vessel ablaze.

Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Kyiv, announced the strike. So did Maksym Marchenko, head of the administration in Odessa. “Neptune missiles … caused very serious damage to the Russian ship,” Marchenko said.

An audio recording, purportedly of Ukrainian troops reporting the attack on the cruiser, circulated on social media.

Russian state media confirmed the ship was on fire and the crew evacuated, but blamed the blaze on an accidental ammunition explosion.

It’s possible Moscow is trying to muddy the waters, so to speak, in order to rob Kyiv of an information victory.

To be fair, Ukrainian sources more than once have reported hits on Russian warships blockading Odessa and other ports since Russia widened its war on Ukraine starting the night of Feb. 23.

Just one report is verified. Ukrainian troops in the besieged city of Mariupol in late March scored a hit on a Russian patrol boat using an old anti-tank guided missile.

Compared to a Konkurs ATGM, Neptune is a much more sophisticated and, to Russian sailors, dangerous weapon. But the pre-war Ukrainian navy probably possessed just one Neptune battery out of the half-dozen or so it planned to induct this spring.

Kyiv launched development of the missile back in 2013 and completed the first test shots in 2018. The Neptune system fires R-360 cruise missiles that fly at low altitude as far as 180 miles. The missile borrows its booster from the S-125 anti-air missile and uses an MS-400 turbojet for cruising. The radar seeker head has a detection range of around 30 miles.

A Neptune battery includes a truck-mounted launcher with four rounds, a command truck and a pair of resupply trucks plus links to a mobile Mineral-U radar with a 370-mile range.

If the Ukrainians really did hit Moskva with a Neptune or two, it means they first managed to cobble together, man and deploy at least one complete battery with all its supporting systems—all in the middle of a devastating war.

It also means they fed accurate targeting data to the battery, via a drone, land-based radar or some other sensor. None of this is easy, but it’s certainly possible.

Still, the claimed attack on Moskva, if confirmed, would be consistent with the course of the broader naval campaign. The Russian Black Sea Fleet, of which the Moskva is the flagship, controls the waters around Ukraine but has been unable totally to suppress Ukraine’s coastal defenses.

Those defenses—mines, anti-tank missiles, long-range ballistic missiles and armed drones—make any amphibious operation against a Ukrainian port extremely risky for the attackers. The fate of the Russian landing ship Saratov, which burst into flames while pier-side in the occupied port of Berdyansk on March 24, underscored that risk.

It’s possible the Ukrainians hit Saratov with a Tochka ballistic missile. Or maybe one of the Ukrainian navy’s Turkish-made TB-2 drones managed to slip through local air-defenses to strike the vessel with a guided missile.

In any event, “the destruction of the Saratov landing ship at Berdyansk will likely damage the confidence of the Russian navy to conduct operations in close proximity to the coast of Ukraine in the future,” the U.K. defense ministry stated.

If the Ukrainians also hit Moskva, a Russian amphibious attack becomes even less likely.

In commission for 40 years, Moskva is not a new ship. But she’s heavily armed with 16 fixed launchers for P-1000 anti-ship missiles, vertical tubes for 64 S-300 air-defense missiles and rail launchers for 40 Osa missiles for aerial self-defense, plus a bevy of guns. Torpedo tubes and a helicopter round out her capabilities.

A veritable floating missile-battery, Moskva is—or maybe was—the Black Sea Fleet’s best defense against Ukrainian attack. With her, the fleet still is vulnerable. Without her, it would be even more exposed to missiles, rockets and drones.