Sinking of Russian warship offers Ukraine a morale … boost

Source: The Hill | April 16, 2022 | Ellen Mitchell

Sinking of Russian warship offers Ukraine a morale — and maybe strategic — boost

The sinking of Russia’s Moskva cruiser has dealt a major blow to the Kremlin’s fleet in the Black Sea and offered up a big public relations win to Ukrainian forces.

The warship — which sank Thursday after Ukrainian and U.S. officials said it was struck by two Neptune missiles, exploded and caught fire — was the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet and one of its most visible weapons in its attack on Ukraine.

The significance is not lost on the Ukrainians, who quickly began using the incident in videos and images posted to social media. But experts are split on whether the ship’s sinking could turn the tide of the war.

“If they start losing their fleet during this war, before the war is even done, the impact on their long-term strategy will be tremendous,” said retired Brig. Gen. Kevin Ryan, a former U.S. defense attaché to Russia who is now a senior fellow at the Belfer Center at Harvard University.

Ryan noted the Russian navy has operated roughly 12-24 ships in the Black Sea since the start of the invasion, 11 of which are around the same size as the Moskva. To lose even one of those vessels cuts Moscow’s naval fleet power in the Black Sea by roughly 10 percent, he said.

It’s also unlikely Russia will be able to quickly replace the Moskva – which can carry up to 500 sailors — as “it takes them a long time to repair and refit ships. They are notoriously bad at that,” Ryan said.

At the Institute for the Study of War, meanwhile, analysts see the incident as “a major propaganda victory for Ukraine,” and likely to hurt Russian morale, but not a major shift in the conflict.

Because Russia used the vessel largely for air defense coverage of its Black Sea Fleet and not to strike Ukrainian land targets, its sinking is “unlikely to deal a decisive blow to Russian operations on the whole,” analysts Mason Clark, Kateryna Stepanenko, and George Barros wrote in their daily war briefing.

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The vessel’s destruction could also affect Russian morale and raise new doubts about Russia’s so far disastrous invasion of Ukraine, according to Clark, Stepanenko and Barros.

“The Kremlin will conversely struggle to explain away the loss of one of the most important vessels in the Russian fleet,” they write. “Both explanations for the sinking of the Moskva indicate possible Russian deficiencies – either poor air defenses or incredibly lax safety procedures and damage control on the Black Sea Fleet’s flagship.”

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