Russian President Vladimir Putin is believed to be eager to retrieve unexploded missiles from the sunken Moskva Cruiser, whose sinking has left Moscow in humiliation.
Russia has begun a massive salvage operation to recover the Moskva cruiser.
Experts suspect Vladimir Putin ’s navy – humiliated by the sinking of its Black Sea Fleet flagship – aims to raise unexploded missiles and top secret coding devices.
It’s possible that someone is trying to bring the bodies to the surface.
The sinking was followed by claims that Ukrainian sources believed there were likely to be nuclear missiles on the Moskva. But the Pentagon claimed that they had no evidence.
Russian sources claim that a 315ft salvage vessel is part of the operation. The submarine, which was sent from Sevastopol on Friday, is said to be supporting the rescue ship.
This is amidst fury from relatives of dozens upon dozens of sailors “missing without a trace”Russia refuses to recognize as dead those who it has not recognized.
Putin’s defence ministry said in a new terse statement that one sailor died – midshipman Ivan Vakhrushev – and 27 are missing.
Although it is not clear if this figure is correct, many parents are afraid for their children’s lives and believe that their conscript sons have died.
The defence ministry maintained its position that the ship went down on 14 April because of a fire, which damaged it during ammunition explosions.
The West supports Ukraine’s claim that it has sunk the Moskva using two Neptune missile strike strikes.
The world’s oldest warship – the 108-year-old Kommuna salvage vessel, built under the last tsar Nicholas II – is positioned over the blitzed wreck, say reports.
It is described as “a ship that can carry a crew of eight.” “floating gantry”It is used to lift loads from the seafloor.
The Russians don’t want to retake the whole lost warship.
Forbes quotes an American defense official who said: “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.”
Forbes reported that Russia may be trying to retrieve its lost items “cryptological materials—radios and keys indicating secret codes—as well as any weapons or logs that might be of interest to a foreign power”.
On the possibility of nuclear weapons being on the Moskva, a Pentagon official said: “We have no indications that there were nuclear weapons on board the Moskva when it went down.”
Among names disclosed by relatives as missing and presumed dead after the Moskva sinking are: Nikita Efremenko, 19, from Priozersk, Leningrad region, Andrey Tsyvov, 19, from Crimea, Nikita Syromyasov, 20, from Crimea, Leonid Savin, 18 or 19, from Alupka, Yegor Shkrebets, 20, from Yalta, Mark Tarasov, 24, from St Petersburg, Sergey Grudinin, 21, from Amur region, Danil Gerok, 22, from Lobnya, Moscow region, and Ivan Frantin, 23, from Karelia, and Ivan Kutnyak.
Angry parents have hit out at “lies” and “bullying” by the authorities over their missing conscript sons who Putin had promised would not be sent into the hot war.
Yet they were among the 510-strong crew in the attack on 14 April.
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 has slammed the “lies” and demanded punishment for the “scumbags” who sent the “boys” – forced into compulsory military service – to their deaths.
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“All the guilty should be punished for what they did. Or rather, what they didn’t do,”According to him, Current Times.
“Because these boys – 19-20 years old – should not have been there during these operations.
“They should have been landed in Sevastopol.
A week after the sinking one frantic mother, Olesya Dubinina, demanded a rescue operation in the hope her son, Nikita Syromyasov, is still alive, trapped in a sealed air bubble in the wreck.
“We urgently need to start a rescue operation. For sure, when it sank there were still living people – wounded, unconscious. For sure, there are battened down parts of the ship that have not been flooded,”She said.
There is no realistic chance that survivors will be found.
The warship’s First Rank Captain Anton Kuprin, 44, was among the survivors, it is understood.
According to reports, Vice-Admiral Igor Osipov was taken into custody as commander of the Black Sea Fleet in the aftermath of the sinking.
