{"id":48122,"date":"2022-04-23T05:22:28","date_gmt":"2022-04-23T05:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=48122"},"modified":"2022-04-23T05:22:28","modified_gmt":"2022-04-23T05:22:28","slug":"under-pressure-russia-admits-one-dead-27-missing-from-moskva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=48122","title":{"rendered":"Under pressure, Russia admits one dead, 27 missing from Moskva"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It took the Russian military more than a week to acknowledge that one service member died and more than two dozen others were missing after the Moskva, the flagship of its Black Sea Fleet, sank, reportedly the result of Ukrainian missile strikes.<\/p>\n

The acknowledgment happened after families started searching desperately<\/a> for their sons who, they said, served on the ship and did not come home, and relatives began posing sharp questions about Russia\u2019s initial statement that the entire crew was evacuated.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s defence ministry said on Friday in a terse announcement that one sailor died and 27 were missing after a fire damaged the Moskva last week, while 396 others were evacuated. The ministry did not offer any explanation for its earlier claims that the full crew managed to escape the vessel before it sank.<\/p>\n

The loss of the Moskva<\/a>,\u00a0 which was one of three missile cruisers of its kind in Russia\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Moscow even insisted that the ship remained afloat and was being towed to a port, only to admit hours later that it sank after all \u2013 in a storm. No images of the ship, or of the supposed rescue operation, were made available.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/img>
A sailor looks at the Moskva moored in the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Sevastopol in 2013. The Soviet-era vessel, which sank earlier this month, was the pride of the Black Sea Fleet [File: Stringer\/Reuters]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Only several days later, the Russian military released a short and mostly silent video showing rows of sailors, supposedly from the Moskva, reporting to their command in the Crimean city of Sevastopol. The footage offered little clarity on how many sailors were actually evacuated to safety.<\/p>\n

\u2018Blatant and cynical lie\u2019<\/h2>\n

Soon came the questions. An emotional social media post by Dmitry Shkrebets alleging that his son, a conscript who served as a cook on the Moskva, was missing, quickly went viral.<\/p>\n

The military \u201csaid the entire crew was evacuated. It\u2019s a lie! A blatant and cynical lie!\u201d Shkrebets, a resident of Crimea, wrote on VK, a popular Russian social media platform, on April 17, three days after the ship went down.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy son, a conscript, as the very commanders of the Moskva cruiser told me, is not listed among the wounded and the dead and is added to the list of those missing \u2026 Guys, missing in the open sea?!\u201d<\/p>\n

Similar posts quickly followed from other parts of Russia. The Associated Press news agency found social media posts looking for at least 13 other young men who reportedly served on the Moskva whose families could not find them.<\/p>\n

One woman spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity, as she feared for her son\u2019s safety. She said her son was a conscript and had been on board the Moskva for several months before telling her in early February that the ship was about to depart for drills. She lost touch with him for several weeks after that.<\/p>\n

The news about Russia invading Ukraine worried her, she said, and she started reading the news online and on social media every day. The last time they spoke on the phone was in mid-March. He was on the ship, but did not say where it was.<\/p>\n

She did not start looking for him until a day after she learned about trouble on board the Moskva because official statements from the defence ministry said the crew was evacuated. But no one called or messaged her about her son\u2019s whereabouts, and she started to get agitated.<\/p>\n