Le Point specialist writer: After the sinking of the Moskva, the Russian cruisers from the Soviet era were floating bombs

The French magazine "Le Point" (Le Point) said that the cruiser Moskva (formerly "Slava", meaning glory in Russian) was the pride of the Russian Navy and a symbol of its power in the seas and the main piece of the Black Sea Fleet, before it sank on April 14, with a fire on board as well. Russia says, or anti-ship missiles, as Ukraine claims.

To find out how Ukraine managed to sink "Moskva", and how important the loss of this piece was to Russia, the newspaper

the naval specialist Vicente Groszlo, editor-in-chief of the Mer et Marine newsletter, which specializes in the different types of military ships it uses. Great powers.

Onboard fire hypothesis

Grosslow said that the Soviet-era Russian cruisers are floating bombs because they are filled with ammunition and fuel, and have no finger placement except for something that can explode, so it cannot be ruled out that a fire on board would have the same effect as a missile.

When asked how to explain the possibility that the Ukrainians could sink this cruiser despite its anti-missile defenses, Gruzlow replied that Moskva, although old, was equipped with powerful means to defend itself against air threats, with surface-to-air missiles and 6 multi-tube cannons designed to resist missiles, but that " The operational context is critical and we don't know it in detail, as it may have been under attack at a time when it sustained some damage, or perhaps the adverse weather conditions in the area have limited the performance of its detection systems, and the defenses it uses may be less efficient than we thought."

Entering drones

Gruazlu indicated that the Ukrainians had talked about the interference of TB2 drones that might have jammed the defense of the Russian cruiser in order to facilitate the missile attack on it, knowing that the "Neptune" missile that the Ukrainians say they used against Moskva is a hypothesis with Credibility, because this anti-ship missile, with a range of 300 km, could have been launched from the coast, beyond the reach of detection means, but it would need to hit a moving target such as a boat for air means to redirect it to its target.

The specialist concluded that the drones may have played this role, which means that this tactic, which the armies envisioned years ago, has demonstrated its feasibility in practice, and stressed the importance of the “threat posed by drones” on land and at sea as one of the main lessons of the war in Ukraine.

The Russian fleet remains the third

Regarding the state of the Russian fleet and its ability to compete with the Navy of the United States or France, Groazlo said that the Russian Navy, which has about 60 submarines and more than 170 surface combat ships, is the third largest navy in the world in terms of "tonnage" after China, which has surpassed the American fleet in terms of the number of units. in early 2020.

Russia theoretically has - as the expert says - a very large naval power and a huge capacity for nuclear strikes, but the bulk of its fleet still consists of old boats designed during the Cold War and may no longer be suitable for modern combat, but Western armies say that Russia is still excellent As far as submarines are concerned, the emergence of hypersonic ballistic missiles also worries the Western fleets.

The US fleet is more advanced

However, the Russian Navy cannot compete with the more technologically advanced US fleet, and the French Navy has a quantitative problem above all, as well as a stockpile of weapons that is insufficient to face a very intense conflict.

Although the loss of Moskva is a very severe blow and deprives Russia of an important means of monitoring in the Black Sea, it does not affect land operations or the control of the Russian Navy over the Black Sea, but the sinking of the cruiser, if it was indeed due to a Ukrainian attack, would impede freedom of action The Russian Navy, which will have to move away from the coast to avoid danger.

A lone aircraft carrier on hold

The specialist in maritime affairs stated that Russia does not currently have an aircraft carrier because the only Russian aircraft carrier "Kuznetsov", which was built during the era of the Soviet Union in Ukraine, is currently not available because it has undergone a comprehensive reform since 2018, because it faced many technical problems as a result of a hybrid concept trying to combine Combine the firepower of the cruiser with carrying planes and helicopters.

The expert concluded that Russia has expressed its ambition to build new aircraft carriers, but these buildings are very complex and expensive, and even the giant cruiser project revealed in 2009 has not yet materialized, and perhaps Moscow has not yet found the financial and technical resources to launch programs of this size.