The pervasiveness of corruption found in Russia certainly does make this all sound quite plausible.
Or both, if they had poor munitions discipline and kept supplies out in the open. (Say, because the hoists from the armored magazines were working poorly, or something… Speculation.)
Which means that I can’t watch it. IPlayer is geolocked, as far as my experience goes. And the VPN I used to use isn’t working.
Someone will upload it somewhere else, I bet. Generally speaking, I think this kind of reporting belongs in the public domain (and I don’t give much of a rat’s arse a about any arguments against that)
I’m sure it will also limit Russia’s ability to resupply forces by sea as well.
Have to worry about being within anti-ship missile range coupled with less anti-air capacity.
Yes. From the article I posted earlier:
At this crucial moment, when Russia is desperate to turn the tide in the face of its massive failures, the soon-to-arrive unspecified anti-ship missiles have effectively killed any realistic Russian hope of a successful naval assault on Odesa or elsewhere on the Crimea-to-Moldova (where Russia illegally has some military forces in another breakaway region, Transnistria) corridor. These missiles will either prevent any assault from happening or virtually doom any would-be assault. This new round of aid with these anti-ship missiles has, thus, basically closed the gap between the Russians collapsing on three fronts and the Neptunes’ presumed deployment.
If (and hopefully when) Neptunes can be eventually deployed, a large portion of the entire Black Sea, including both the west and east coasts of Russian-occupied Crimea—where many of Russia’s naval vessels are based and resupplied—as well as the Sea of Azov, would be vulnerable. And if Ukraine is able to push Russian forces back closer to Crimea, even missiles with shorter range could threaten Russia’s ability to dock its ships and even the southern coast of Crimea and beyond can be vulnerable.
Soon, Russia’s navy will almost certainly have to turn tail and run to the southern Black Sea, unable to offer meaningful support in the ground war, or even move to port back in Russia proper (as in, the non-illegally occupied/annexed parts of Ukraine) to avoid near-total destruction. If there will be any problems or delays deploying the Neptunes, NATO should ensure longer-range anti-ship missiles, including some of the Norwegian NSMs, are provided to Ukraine so they can either destroy Russia’s navy or render it irrelevant, putting more Russian ships under range or pushing them even further back than would be the case with just, say, Harpoon missiles.
Yeah when your official story is “the enemy did NOT sink our ship, it was destroyed through our own sailors’ incompetence!” then you know the war isn’t going your way.
And the residents of Mariupol and Odesa and places in between may not be content to rely on Russian naval incompetence to take out other ships, but might feel better about relying on Ukrainian missiles taking out other ships. So, yeah, it matters.
My thought is an experienced person would know that you don’t let your guard down, no matter the narrative that is being promoted.
I wasn’t talking about the narrative.
Replies to this tweet are equally funny Moskva sinking memes.
Right. But I was.
The sinking of the Moskva proves that Kyiv is fighting smart while Moscow is not. It illustrates the weakness of dictators with big egos who cant take criticism. Even now Russian TV is pushing more propaganda as if the problem is “not enough pro-Russian bots on social media.” This is like Trump not handling COVID well: reality always comes calling.
My big fear is that Putin will wise up.
(Added)
More shades of Stalinist self destruction.
Apparently this was what the ship’s Wikipedia page briefly looked like earlier today.
Its prior status was “on fire.”
Ukraine: Remember that ship that our soldiers told to go fuck itself? We just sunk it!
Russia: That’s a lie! It sunk on its own!
Ukraine: Well golly, we honestly didn’t think you’d honor that request.
An article from January 20, 2022, has a lot of background information about the Moskva.