Ukraine says it launched cruise missile strike that disabled Russian Black Sea flagship as Moscow expects Moscow to focus on war east amid fierce fighting continue to strike the port city of Mariupol, where the defenders are still resisting.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on April 14 that a fire on the Moskva missile cruiser had detonated munitions, but Maksym Marchenko, the Ukrainian governor of the region around the Black Sea port of Odessa, mentioned the ship had been hit by two Ukrainian-made Neptune anti-ship cruise missiles.
“The Neptune missiles guarding the Black Sea caused very serious damage,” he wrote in a message on Telegram as the Russian-launched war entered its 50th day.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych mentioned that “a surprise happened” with the Moskva, which was seen as a key part of any plan Russia might have had to launch an amphibious attack on Odessa.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the fire had been extinguished and the ship “remained afloat” with its “main missile armaments” unharmed.
There was no immediate reaction from the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, but Russia said it had evacuated the ship’s crew.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said the United States did not have enough information to confirm the cause of the explosion on the Moskva.
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan called it “a blow to Russia”.
In comments to the Economic Club of Washington, he said: “They kind of had to choose between two stories: one story is that it was just incompetence, and the other was that they were attacked. “, he said, adding that neither. is a good result for Russia.
Russia accused the Ukrainian forces to launch airstrikes on the Russian region of Bryansk on April 14, injuring civilians. The Russian Investigative Committee alleged that two Ukrainian military helicopters entered Russian airspace and carried out airstrikes on residential buildings in the village of Klimovo.
The National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (RNBO) rejected the charges, calling them “an attempt to trigger anti-Ukrainian hysteria in Russia”.
In nearby Mariupol, heavy fighting was reported as Russia tried to take full control of the strategic city, which if true would be the first city Moscow has been able to capture since the war was launched February 24.
Russia has said more than 1,000 Ukrainian marines have surrendered in the past 36 hours, but Ukrainian military officials have not confirmed the reports, saying only that Ukrainian forces are joining the city to continue defending it. .
Mariupol has become a key battleground because it would give Russia a land corridor between the separatist-held eastern areas and the Crimea region it seized and annexed in 2014. It would also free up troops engaged there to assist in a broader assault in southern and eastern Ukraine.
As the fighting raged, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said nine humanitarian corridors had been agreed with Russia to allow the evacuation of civilians from several towns, including Mariupol, on April 14.
Vereshchuk also said that a new prisoner exchange had been agreed with Russia and that a total of 30 Ukrainians would return home on April 14.
Russia’s war on Ukraine has been widely criticized, with the international community imposing crippling sanctions on Moscow while isolating it diplomatically. US President Joe Biden said on April 13 that the conflict amounted to genocide.
Ukraine’s parliament backed a resolution on April 14 recognizing the actions of Russian forces as genocide – defined by the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention as crimes intended to “destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, by whole or in part”.
The actions of the Russian military “are not only a crime of aggression, but pursue the goal of the systematic and consistent destruction of the Ukrainian people”, reads the text of the resolution.
“hold Russia to account for its brutal and unwarranted invasion.”
The war has also raised security concerns in other countries in Europe, with Sweden and Finland saying on April 13 that it could only be a few weeks before they apply to join the alliance. NATO security.
Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council and one of President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, warned April 14 that such a move by the two Nordic countries would put an end to the concept of a “nuclear-free” Baltic region.
