The sinking of one of Russia’s most formidable warships, the Moskva, is a stunning blow for the country — whether the ship sank after an accidental fire, as Russia’s defence ministry maintains, or after being struck by missiles, as Ukraine has claimed.

More than 600 feet long and weighing 12,500 tons, according to Russian news agencies, the Moskva was one of the Russian Navy’s largest vessels and the flagship of its fleet in the Black Sea.

That body of water, whose coastline is shared with several other countries, including Ukraine, Georgia and Turkey, has been of strategic importance to Russia for centuries. The Moskva was deployed to support Russian aircraft and troops in Syria in 2015, and in 2008, it patrolled the coast of Georgia during the Russian-Georgian war.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the Moskva — armed with 16 Vulkan missile launchers with a strike range of more than 400 miles, according to Russian state media — and the rest of the Black Sea fleet have launched missiles into Ukraine several times.

The ships also cut off Ukraine’s access to the sea and the economic lifeline it provided.

Although military analysts said the loss of the Moskva was not likely to alter the course of the war, it was an embarrassment for Russia’s military, which has spent billions of dollars to modernise its weaponry.

The ship had the ability to do “significant damage” in the Black Sea, said Gary Roughead, a retired admiral and the former chief of naval operations for the US. He added that with the Moskva’s demise, Russia has most likely lost a key communications and controls platform.

The loss of the Moskva has been estimated by Forbes Ukraine to have cost Russia $750 million and to be Russia’s most expensive military loss in the war to date.

The vessel was also a symbol of national pride. Its name was “Glory” when it was first put into service for the Soviet Navy in the early 1980s. It was renamed after the Russian capital in 1996, according to Russian state media.

“Picture the aircraft carrier USS George Washington going to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean,” James Stavridis, a retired US Navy admiral and a former supreme allied commander at Nato, said of the ship’s symbolism.

Missiles hit ship: US

The US now believes the sunken Russian missile cruiser Moskva, the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet, was hit by two Ukrainian missiles, a senior US official said on Friday.

The senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said these were Neptune anti-ship missiles. The US believes there were Russian casualties, though numbers are unclear, the official added.

Russian news agencies cited the defence ministry on Thursday as saying that the missile cruiser Moskva sunk in stormy seas after what it said was a fire and explosions.

(New York Times News Service and Reuters)

Moscow Times ban

Russia on Friday blocked access to the Russian-language website of The Moscow Times because of a story about the conflict in Ukraine, the newspaper said. The English-language website was unaffected though Russian Internet providers started to block its Russian-language site after a notice from Russia’s communications watchdog.

Russia’s communications watchdog did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The newspaper, which has has covered Russia for three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, said on its English-language website that its Russian service was blocked after it published what “authorities call a false report on riot police officers refusing to fight in Ukraine”.

The article was still on the paper’s Russian website on Friday. (Reuters)