Russian warship badly damaged after Kyiv claims missile strike while Putin’s troops regroup in eastern Ukraine

Losing the Moskva ship would be a military and symbolic blow for Russia as war enters its eighth week

The crew of Russia’s Black Sea fleet flagship has been evacuated after the vessel suffered serious damage following a suspected missile strike claimed by the Ukrainians, in the latest blow to Vladimir Putin’s stumbling war effort.

Some 500 sailors were on board the Moskva when it suffered what the Kremlin described as a fire and explosion of ammunition.

However Ukraine’s southern military command said that it hit the warship with a Neptune anti-ship missile and that it had started to sink the Soviet-era missile cruiser. The loss of the ship would be a huge military and symbolic defeat for Mr Putin. However, neither statement by the two sides about the incident has been independently verified.

The Russian Navy’s guided missile cruiser Moskva seen last year near Turkey (Reuters)

Nevertheless, later on Thursday, western officials said that Ukraine’s claim of a missile strike appeared “credible” and described Moscow’s version of events as “difficult to believe”.

Armed with S-300F Rif missiles, Moskva is an important component of Russia’s air defence over southern Ukraine. It also featured in one of the landmark early exchanges of the war, when Ukrainian border guards on Snake Island, a small outcrop in the Black Sea, told the ship to “Go f*** yourself” after it demanded they surrender.

Later on Thursday – the 50th day of the invasion – US national security adviser Jake Sullivan described the incident as a “big blow to Russia”, while Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia would seek to “avenge their defeats”.

Russia said measures were being taken to tow the stricken ship back to its port in Sevastopol, Crimea, and vowed to investigate the cause of the fire, which was seen as a major setback – the biggest Russian warship damaged in conflict since 1941 – for the Kremlin just days after Mr Putin’s land offensive ground to a halt north of the Ukrainian capital.

The Kremlin’s 24 February invasion has stuttered under a robust Ukrainian army, which in many areas has swung from defence to counter-attack.

This map shows the extent of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (Press Association)

But with the fighting spilling into its eighth week, Mr Putin appears undeterred, having this week defended the war and said that Russia would achieve its “noble” aims in Ukraine.

Russian forces are now readying for a new assault in the Donbas region that is likely to define the outcome of the conflict.

All eyes are on that part of eastern Ukraine, where the country’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Malyar, said Russian troops were regrouping. She also warned that the Kremlin’s forces were massing in Belarus and Moldova’s breakaway Transnistria region.

What’s more, concerns are rising over the fate of Mariupol, Ukraine’s main Sea of Azov port, which would be the first major city to fall to Russian forces, after 1,000 Ukrainian marines were said to have surrendered on Wednesday, according to the Kremlin.

A Russian victory in the besieged southern city would allow Mr Putin to form an uninterrupted corridor between separatist-held eastern areas and annexed Crimea.

Ukrainian soldiers in a tank on the frontline in Donbas (Anadolu Agency via Getty)

Meanwhile, Moscow said on Thursday that villages in its southern regions of Bryansk and Belgorod had come under fire from Ukraine. There was no immediate response from Kyiv to the claims.

Away from the battlefield, the Kremlin threatened on Thursday to respond with a deployment of nuclear weapons to the Baltics if Nato allies Sweden and Finland pushed ahead with plans to join the military alliance.

“There can be no more talk of any nuclear-free status for the Baltic, the balance must be restored,” said Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council.

“Until today, Russia has not taken such measures and was not going to. If our hand is forced, well ... take note it was not us who proposed this.”

Putin chairs a meeting of the country’s oil and gas industry via a video link at a residence outside Moscow on Thursday (via Reuters)

Mr Medvedev did not specify where this would happen or what measures could be implemented, but Russia has its Kaliningrad exclave – sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania – and was only recently conducting naval drills in the Baltic Sea.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later said Mr Putin was also considering how best to bolster Russia’s security in light of the development, with the defence ministry due to present him with its proposals on the subject soon.

With diplomatic tensions escalating, investigators are also trying to piece together the chain of events that led to hundreds of civilian deaths, apparently in areas occupied by Russian troops before they were forced to retreat.

Andriy Nyebytov, head of the Kyiv regional police, said more than 800 bodies had been found in three formerly Russian-occupied districts.

“We are finding terrible things: buried and hidden bodies of people who were tortured and shot, and who died as a result of mortar and artillery fire,” he said.

The discovery came as the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor declared Ukraine a “crime scene” and said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe war crimes have been committed, after hundreds of bodies were recovered in Bucha.

Meanwhile, US president Joe Biden, who described Russia’s actions in Ukraine as “genocide” earlier this week, approved $800m (£612m) in new military assistance to Kyiv.