A few hours ago, some sources published an alleged photos of the cruiser Moscow after being hit by anti-ship missiles.
The silhouette of the stern of the ship in the photos corresponds to the silhouette of the stern of the Moskva cruiser.
More than half of the ship is missing or invisible in the photos, at least from the midship frame to the bow.
The sea roughness in the photos is consistently close to the weather conditions at the time of the incident.
Assuming that the photos are authentic, this means that there was earlier destruction of the ship’s structure and the entire front part sank or severely damaged, while the remainder from the centre to the stern maintained buoyancy. If there was a detonation of the main missile payload, it is difficult to imagine such a picture.
UPDATE: Or do we see the front of the ship completely smoke-filled. In any case, the versions stated below have the right to exist, with the correction that the 3rd version becomes on a par with the two main ones.
The SF reader’s comment: “I actually don’t think it’s fake. To me, these pictures are consistent with the prevailing narrative, that there was a fire/explosion in the forward gun magazine.
If the smoke is thick enough it can cover the silhouette of the forward part of the ship to make it appear as though it is not there. In the second picture where the smoke has cleared, the forward part of the ship is visible.”
This leaves two main versions, either the observed picture is the result of a submarine attack, or these photos are fake.
There certainly remains a third version, that Neptune anti-ship missiles miraculously and precisely hit the cruiser’s waterline area in the vicinity of the main missile ammunition depot without causing its detonation.
MORE ON THE TOPIC:
- Frank Answers To Our Readers’ Questions On Moskva Cruiser Case
- Strike On Moskva Missile Cruiser Is Only Precursor To Change In Military Situation In Region
- UPDATE. Russian Ministry Of Defence: The Cruiser Moskva Sunk
Who posts these updates!?
You can clearly tell from the picture that the ship is structurally intact.
And the front part of the ship is on fire/was on fire which is consistent with an ammunition fire.
Thank you, indeed, it may be the result of smoke, but that does not remove the main issues. Then, it is a fake, as such smoke from this angle could not have covered the entire silhouette of the ship. Don’t you agree?
I actually don’t think it’s fake. To me, these pictures are consistent with the prevailing narrative, that there was a fire/explosion in the forward gun magazine.
If the smoke is thick enough it can cover the silhouette of the forward part of the ship to make it appear as though it is not there. In the second picture where the smoke has cleared, the forward part of the ship is visible.
The article updated. Thank you very much again.
Could still have been a mine rather than a torpedo. Russia openly acknowledged there were loose mines in precisely that area, and mines can be hard to see in choppy waters.
I don’t think a mine. Probability is very low. I stay with my assumption of a special underwater operation ‘frogmen’ type with Turk or Romanian submarine. Also is consistent with the situation: a single ship with no proper sonar detection around. The submarine only drive in a free sonar range, release the frogmen with the delayed charge, return and flee. Also is consistent with the zone struck, the forward zone, far away from the propellers.
With a hole on the base of the superstructure? Low flying mines?
Missiles, torpedoes, mines or may be a drone landed on the ship and started the fire….
Y un mar oscuro y de noche-amaneciendo
Great
I like how this bot is mocking Southfront admin 😃😃😃
I don’t think these pictures are fake either.
But I think the Russian navy would rather say they burnt and sank their own ship, rather then admit a Ukrainian missile got through.
I have several reasons to argue this three of which are circumstantial provided by the Russians themselves.
1)Russians have been underestimating the Ukrainians this whole war, and after the ship was damaged the Russian ships off the Ukrainian coast moved further south and east out of range.
2) the next day the factory that produce the missiles was struck by the Russians.
3) in retaliation for something missile strikes were intensified and landed further west in Ukraine then had been the norm.
4) the Neptune is designed to aim for the larges part of the ship at the waterline.as you can see in the below video of an indigenous Turkish ASM the only visible damage is a hole in the hull 1m above the water line. The Moskova is listing so far to port that you wouldn’t be able to see the holes, you can’t even see her name.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f43oM7wUWl0
5) the Ukrainians claimed to have struck and the ship right around the time it “caught fire” and before it sank. How did they know it was going to sink, if the s300 was killing anything flying within 150km
Could this sinking have been caused by a fire? Sure I toured a small Soviet submarine in Sam Diego. Submariners are the most professional and dedicated seamen of any navy. While cleaning the sun the curators found over 400 empty vodka bottles. How many bottle could a crew stash on such a big ship?
As a side this looks like the pics were taken the next day after the strike, the intensity of the fire has died down as soot can be seen on the ship where no smoke is. The seas were rough the day she was struck, they calmed down the next day.
After what I see in the photo there IS NO WAY of a MISSILE strike. Period.
It’s visible in both images but that’s the bow (rear part), not the forward part: clearly in all images the prow is the part with the landing pontoon (weird design if you ask me but that’s how it is).
They look real to me too. In any case this would be what the Moskva’s final moments would have looked like before it sank. Listing to one side before going down. I do, however, wonder if there actually was a serious attempt by the Russian’s to tow the ship to port? It would be very interesting to see pictures of how they tried to save the ship. Would they even have dared to approach the Moskva as it probably still was at the spot where it was hit. Trying to reach it would therefore have endangered the rescuers as well?
Yes, it looks too short. But I’m also have some doubts on this argument, because maybe the perspective together with the smoke makes it seem shorter. Hmmm…. definitely a very impressive fake, minus perhaps the apparent length.
In the second photo, the outline of the bow of the ship can be seen, with four angled launch tubes just visible through the smoke. The location of the strike is squarely amidships, along the waterline; this is the spot a cruise missile is aiming for. As for ammunition being on fire, warships are normally full of weapons and ammo, so that is not saying much.
It would appear that the ship had been underway, under its own power, and simply began to list a bit too much. That would explain the early daylight in the photo. The majority of the crew would most likely have been evacuated by this point, leaving only a skeleton crew to be rescued at the last moment.
IMHO, these photos are authentic.
If it had been struck by a missile we would see far more hull deformation.
The dark spot you are referring to is also not at the waterline as the ship is listing.
In my humble opinion, these pictures confirm that the ship experienced a fire in the ammunition compartment, which made the crew flood the forward compartments to quell the fire and prevent further ammunition explosions.
Prevailing wind direction.
Agreed, eerily similar situation of HMS Sheffield for reference.
https://i.postimg.cc/YGb8tp5V/F87420-A9-1032-4350-AD0-D-816-DBC2-A2845.jpg
How is the weather in Sheffield? Hot I would imagine, hot enough to make the natives restless perhaps?
Look closely at the second picture. Behind the smoke the silhouette of the bow can be seen. Also note that the picture is a highly compressed JPEG which makes matters worse, due to compression artifacts.
I think “someone” is right on the money.
it could be that the ship hit a powerful mine that caused a fire, we also see the pumps bailing out water..
Mid ship on the base of the superstructure? Low flying mines,?
I don’t see any reason to think as you do: in all appearance the smoke billows in exactly that direction so as to obscure the prow side, all the features in that semi-hidden part of the image are consistent with the ship in the other images.
Main thing that surprised me was that the flank seems to have several impacts, even if only one caused the fire. This does not match any account so far: neither the “accidental fire” Russia says nor the two Neptune missiles Ukraine claims to have fired.
Also story about misile attack with neptune is fake. Claiming responsibility by UA is not enough for me. It was PR attack and there was no video of shooting neptunes and chanting “slava Ukraini” (similiar to attacks with antitank misiles).
Rus dont want to escalate conflict so they dont blame real perpetrators.
Is the tug bigger than the cruiser? From the pictures, that’s what it looks like.
It is clearly visuable that the ship is burning inside, don’t you see the black smoke residu on the port . And this black lines it first had the wind in the back .
The weather is correct a very mild breeze 4 knots, 2bf.
There is clearly a hole On the base of the bridge explaining the fire.
The ship is already listing to port.20yo 30 degree. Holes are clearly visible in the hull and down the supperstructur.
It looks like a sabotage. There is signs of various fires ( the black spots ) and no clear sign of a missile impact. At best it could have been one of the mines the ukrops disseminated into the Black Sea. But the sabotage is much more probable.
As for the accident, it has a low probability. These sailors aren’t professionals. They don’t play near ammo.
Whilst they could be real – if you look closely you will see the shape of both the smoke and the sprays of water from the water cannons are exactly the same in both pictures, which means they were taken at the same time, and as they are clearly taken from the same vantage point, but one lacks a guard rail and onlooker, there must have been some doctoring happening. However, despite the doctoring (or ‘photoshopping’) I see no reason to bellieve the original wasn’t a real photo.
“shape of both the smoke and the sprays of water from the water cannons are exactly the same in both pictures” – shape of waves too!
Didn’t the ship sink at night? Then, should not be sky dark and fires bright?
Yes, but obviously these pictures are from earlier in the day and not long after the fire/explosion occurred. I’m not sure at which time in the day the fire/explosion took place.
If we can establish a timeline it would be easy to say if these pictures are real or not.
depends how long it stayed afloat. It’s too bad the pumps couldn’t keep up with the gushing, or that workers could not improve the size of the holes..
I watched The Duran’s take on this and Alexander said, they might have scuttled it deliberately. That kind of makes sense. It was a rather old ship anyway and before you risk some greater catastrophe ashore, it may be the sane choice. I mean, that fire looks pretty bad and who knows if another missile in the bunker does not explode in a freak accident later on. Such a thing happening in the strategically important port of Sevastopol would be a major catastrophe.
Peter the Great, very interesting historical figure.
I also watched Alexander in this clip about the ship, I agree more or less, Yes, if the fire is out but there are unstable ammunition below deck which cannot be reached safely, than the ship need to be hand over to an EOD team and be sunk safely. However, does anybody knew what really happened and how many are killed? was there a secondary explosion??
there are many things we do not know at this point.
“However, does anybody knew what really happened and how many are killed?”
I don’t think so, it’s all just fog of (info) war. But given the track record of Ukrop propaganda lies, I seriously doubt their version.
The ship does not look very long at all, in the smokey pictures.
Also, those photos have a ghost like quality which the smoke cannot explain.
yup, looks very short.
and on 2nd thought, the camera type are different between those two, and the sky and cloud types look different enough that it might be hard to explain without much time passing between those two photographs.
Well, what is wrong with two photos coming from different cameras? That also explains the “different sky”. Different time, different angle, and different camera settings alone (i.e. does not have to be different camera) are sufficient to account for the differences in appearance.
The rest is artifacts of the JPEG compression, which was done at least twice due to the watermark which got put on an already compressed image.
“those photos have a ghost like quality which the smoke cannot explain”
Lossy JPEG compression can though. Look how blocky the smoke looks on the side of the ship just above the water line. Putting a watermark on it made it worse because that is another compression iteration and compression artifacts get worse with every iteration. It’s called generation loss.
Don’t modern torpedoes detonate underneath a ship so to break the hull?
it was hit by two asm. but yes torps detonate under ship.
I would suggest that two ASM’s would cerate a lot of visible damage. More than what is in the photos (if genuine).
If anything it was supposed to be a missile strike. Those things tend to come from above. Don’t you switch up the story now, Mr. Elensky. :P
But the harder people try to find “evidence” for said “strike”, the more I believe the Russian version, especially with such clumsy attempts.
Try harpoon nato usa missile..is consistant with damage,explains bypassing defences,also retalliatory attacks on depots of usa in ukraine next day. In short direct attack by usa controlled military on cruiser,attempting to distract from the aborted nato general and mercenary bioweapons catastrophic exposure to world.
I don’t think so. We would see a much more noticeable deformation of the hull if it had been hit by a missile.
we wait and see..care for a wager?
NATO would not dare. That would be a direct act of war.
The retaliatory strikes, not only on “depots of usa”, were because of Ukraine’s deliberate attacks on civilians on Russian territory. The Russian MoD were very loud and clear about it just the day before, for example, that factory near Kiev was hit. Ukrops kept doing it anyway and got the “receipt”, as promised – RF don’t bluff.
BTW, that transport airplane with all those weapons that got downed near Odessa was shot down to spite the west, I am sure: “Look some hundred million $ worth of ‘bang bang’ going ‘poof'”.
Or LRASM ( Long Range Anti-Ship Missile) which is a stealthy missile. But I doubt the missile hypothesis.
The strikes on Kiev the next day were a retaliation for cross- border attacks by the Ukies and Putin had threatened those strikes before the sinking.
Based on its track- record of fakes, the Ukies are making up the story about the missile strikes.
Sabotage is the most likely explanation, along with NATO connivance.
Photos can be deepfaked.
The ship is clearly intact in the second photo, it appears as a blurred silhouette. You can even see the angled launchers for those P-1000 Vulkan if you know what you are looking at.
I can see the front of the ship through the smoke wtf
If it was struck by missiles Ukraine would have had to have help from one or more of NATO counties for logistics !! If that’s the case it means that whoever it was helping did it without a NATO approval which makes sense why we haven’t seen pictures or videos !! I have herd others talk about this theory as well and that they are scramming now backchannels to avoid international sandal, most are guessing that it was with the help of British navy !!
yea agreed. USA ambiguity on this event is telling. Neither USA not Russia want to admit who sunk the Moskva as the implications are enormous.
If it was Ukraine USA would be trumpeting it for pro Ukraine ‘we are winning’ propaganda . Also where are the Ukraine Videos of the missiles launching from shore?
It British Navy that sailed through Crimea waters last year in massive NATO naval+ air force exercise . They have good submarines and massive ego. They would want bragging rights they took down the Moskva. Looks like NATO involved in locating, targeting and the hit. Be interesting to know of it was a British surveillance plan on patrol in Roumania the black Sea. Or if all that NATO surveillance planes data is shares among all NATO anyway so UK sub would know the Moskva is there.
I say they look legit, the first photo is a bit blurry but not bad in the second the water cannons are both working. Also in both pics all life rafts are deployed aft save one both pics. If fake great details. Only question from pics is what cooked off? Looks like hits took place on port at the ak-630 so a couple thousand 30mm there, but looks aft missile tubes ok , so what cooked off? Maybe it was able to penetrate into stacks all that air flow would feed the hell out of a fire. either way looks legit
Ammo for the twin 130mm cannon.
You can tell from those dark spots along the ship’s side, which I assume are portholes (sorry I’m not familiar with the correct terminology) that they were darkened by smoke which indicates that there was a hell of a fire in the forward part of the ship.
The 130 is on the bow. It has a large magazine some 300 plus rounds where that fire is aft the missile tubes is over 85 meters from the gun magazine. I have seen many cutaways of Slavas and there is no magazine near that part of the ship? Now I guess one could store 130mm rounds any where on the ship but they weigh in at 80kg each. Thats quite the struggle to deliver some 80 plus meters to reload under decks no doubt.
I have never been on a Slava and never served on one so I speak only from what I have read and what is open source so if you have been on the ship is there something stored there? Just curios? Because from what I can find the only thing where that fire is seen in the pics that could be burning would be 30mm. 2000 rounds in the 6-30s and I would imagine more would be stored close by to reload those guns but nothing that would tear a cruiser apart? I would think the ASM did their job and got in deep. If some one knows the slave well. I posted on a Russian site but translate sucks so waiting to see what they say had a couple posters who served on slavas in late 80s eraly 90s
I do see what your saying about the burn marks, clearly agree that fire spread, was a beast of a fire for sure.
Sure, just ‘save image’ of picture 2, open in Photoshop, increase the size by 50% and hit ‘sharpen’. Would you like to do that Southfront? I’d post it up if I could.
The question is, are the two differently shaded panels beside the hole clearly visible bent inwards or blown outwards?? The shiny one to the bottom of the forward edge looks bent inwards. The stern edge of the hole has a discontinuous panel but it may be an interior bulkhead.
I reckon its taking water at that time, or that area is sealed off. The hole is open below the waterline, that makes a mine seem likely.
The sea appears to be calm.
The ship is also still afloat. Nobody really knows where and when exactly it sank, and weather conditions at sea can change dramatically rather quickly.
Are you blind? The silhouette for your “missing half of the ship” is clearly visible behind the smoke
Nice picture. Have we won yet?
We have in Miropol. Slava Rossiye. Z
Really? Destroying the city, demolishing buildings, burning homes, killing residents and expelling them, you call that a victory?!? Uh! Sorry, but burning a foreign country and killing its inhabitants is a victory only for fools and sadists.
You are another brainwashed 🐑! God bless Russia special operation! Residents of Mariopul are happy to be freed from nazis/marxist and to be part of the mother Russia again!
Hard times are ahead for the people of Mariupol. They will be ruled by the Putin regime, with no hope of reconstruction, as there will be no investment and money. The city will remain empty, without life, without a future, just like Crimea will slowly die. Sad, very sad.
p.s.
Anyone who’s not been brainwashed knows, that “special operation” is properly called a war. But I understand you, after a decade of Putin’s propaganda, you repeat what they tell you and you don’t even notice it. That’s how dictatorship works. Keep going!
That’s the pot calling the kettle black! LOL
If your into believing the Russian propaganda word for word there is something wrong.
Yes, all of the azovisis cockroaches are now with bandera and 72 virgins HAHAHAHAHA
the shadows of ship points that the ship is tilted to the north direction,so a missile strike is possible .
Could it actually be a Russian false flag, as in they sank their own ship, in order to rally further support and reason to escalate with more firepower and to expand the war with further deployment of assets?
Surely Russia wouldn’t do as the USA does?
Putins ego would not allow such a humiliating false flag. Also The Russian forces are already throwing everything that have at the Ukrainians with the exception of FOAB and nukes.
Regardless, it’s a shame because the Moskva would have been a cool ship to visit as a museum had it been able to be retired.
You may still be able to visit it one day as it sunk in the shallow parts of the Black Sea, where it is between 50-100 meters deep. I suppose it could be brought back up to the surface again and then towed back to Sevastopol, where it would be fixed up and then permanently retired from action and turned into the floating boat museum it really had been for the last few years.
Smoke on the water, but there’s fire down below. Hard to say definitively – there appears to be superstructure missing which wouldn’t be missing with either a missile strike or an uncontrolled fire. However, look closely mid-ships, waterline and there are two “dark patches” port side. We are told that the missiles hit port side. So…???? Also, at the stage the photos were taken, they would have abandoned ship – no one top-side and nothing in the water that would lead you to believe there had been an abandonment of the ship. Also, unless these photos were released by the MoD, I would be very skeptical that some Russian sailor risked his career distributing “unauthorized” photos. The Russian forces in Ukraine are arnal about the use of cellphones and posting on the internet. Jury is out – I have my doubts.
One or both of the photos are fake.
The structure of the smoke is precisely the same in the first and second photos (the same curves/breaks in the smoke just above the highest point of the ship). Smoke is not static. Even a second’s lapse between photos would have changed the structure—clear evidence that the photos have been manipulated.
Good spot. Yep photos are the same, first picture is zoomed in but shoulder in bottom right should still be there, instead there is sunlight on the sea. So Russkies trying to cover gross embarrassment of a hit with smaller one of incompetence (fire). So we are still in mystery how it went down (NATO or Ukraine hit, torpedo, surface missile, or mine) and how many sailors were lost?
I read Moskva has good aerial defense but not good submarine defense. Does Ukraine Navy have any submarines?
The Kremlin lies as soon as it opens its mouth. Didn’t they claim that the ship Moscow sank due to high waves and storm? But the sea is completely calm. They said there were no casualties? Apparently, the ship was badly damaged and even at the sailors’ assembly there were only a third of them. Yes, the Kremlin is lying all the time. But supporters still believe that killing Ukrainians and demolishing their homes, destroying their country, is a justifiable and moral act. Horrible.
Marshal Ustinov and Varyag need to be UPGRADED asap with new radars for S-300F, SA-8 and new CIWS like Kashtan or Pantsir-M. late 70’s early 80’s radar technology was good back in the day but not anymore. Especially not against new sea skimming cruise missiles.
They have been modernized more than a decade ago. Moskva was skipped
The Russian MoD statement claimed that it was a fire on board, that ended up igniting ammunition. But the source of such fire was never discussed.
From the pics, it doesn’t look like like a missile strike at all. Watch carefully and you will clearly see the “front half of the ship” silhouette behind the smoke curtain.
The last known position would discard the mine theory as well.
Looks like the pics are very much real, and the MoD statement is the closest to the truth.
Which means the flagship sank due to their own incompetence, not exactly a morale boost either
The ship has been hit near the center. There seem to be hole(s) above the waterline. Survivor told that it was hit by three missiles.
Front of the ship is intact, surface to surface missile tubes are visible.
These ships do not have “ammunition magazine” to mention of. These are missile ships with ready to launch ammunition in tubes.
At first: Ship looks at both photos in one piece
BUT MAIN THING: Both photos are identical (look at smoke pattern right above crane mast – its absolutely identical …. same as waves) then here is high probability of some kind of fake …. Technicaly it looks to first photo someone add that guy (probably to hide that “white calm part of sea”) and second photo can be authentic or more likely not – because that first photo are larger (at left side) then second and is impossible to have smaller original
Iam not 100% sure but I think both are fake ….. But very good fake
For the benefit of those who are dissecting the photographic material in its present form, I would humbly remark that the original article, published several hours ago, included two different pictures, both heavily watermarked.
The second of those images roughly corresponds to the first photo presented now, whilst the first shot was a rather long range one, presumably taken at an earlier time, with towering smoke almost completely obscuring the bow superstructure. Hence the dubious statements about missing or invisible parts…
More pictures, with superior detail and slightly differen angles, are now available (see for example Colonel Cassad’s blog) which dispel doubts raised about the identical smoke patterns, water cannons etc.
1) If it was a submarine attack it would have been broken “the keel would break”and sank immediately.
2) Russia lies again: there was no storm but 4 kn or a 2 beaufort this is easy to check on weather maps.
3) Russia lies again: if it was no missile why are the other ships then all suddenly sailing out of missile rang from the coast?
4) And again: if it was a submarine you should search and destroy, not flee!
5) a cigarrete, a submarine or a missile all are equal embrassing for Russia, its flag ship sank out of stupidity, negligence, incappability or disfunctionality.
6) every rational thinking being should have come to this conclusion.
From my MA viewing photo 1 there is no way of missile strike ! A damage caused by missiles just don’t show like that ! Never. Mostly as the official statement said: internal fire on unknown origin. I don’t think ammo explosion either. An ammo explosion would tear apart the ship. Probably only minor calibre ones. Will see.
I’d say the photos are plausible and even probably true. There’s no missing half, it’s just diffuminated by the thick smoke but we can actually see it and even those tanks or guns or whatever they are in the back part of the stareboard side.
What called my attention first of all are what seem impact marks in all the stareboard side, suggesting the ship was attacked by several missiles, what contradicts all versions so far (even the arrogant Ukrainian claim only mentioned two missiles).