Those are not mutually exclusive. After they said the Moskva sank in an accident, they launched a rain of cruise missiles against several Uke based including the one by Lviv where NATO equipment stages as it comes it.
I would expect we are going to see Russia go ahead and push east and do something to give Zelinsky a scare.
Sigh.
Then the first event (the sinking) is not the causative excuse for the other (the missile strike).
If the official Ruskie cause for the sinking of the Moskava is Thr Ukrainians. Then the Ruskies cannot claim that the missile attack is a retaliation. The attack has to stand on its own heathen merits.
“I would expect we are going to see Russia go ahead and push east and do something”
If they could, they probably would.
But their offensive ability has culminated.
Only Wagner Group/GRU mercenaries make any advances any more. Those advances are now small, and they have been pulling back everything they have around the world, and flushing it down the toilet in the Ukraine to make even those small gains. The transportation delays in pulling their folks back from far flung places like Syria and Libya means that they have not yet chewed up all their existing combat units, like the Russian Military already has.
When you look at combat units of the regular Russian ground forces (including their Naval Infantry) - those that are staffed, equipped and trained as a functioning combat arms units - they have rotated pretty much all of them through combat in the Ukraine already, and many were reduced by 30-50% strength.
During the Vietnam War, the USA never committed over 25% of its available combat units.
Russia has already stripped cadre out of its training base, including their Military Academies, to replace personnel losses in units. They don’t have fresh units to send in. Recently reconstituted units have loads of hardly trained new individual replacements.
Russian Regular units in the East have been almost entirely redeployed to the South in recent weeks.
If Russia wants to make a political statement with a high profile counter-strike, Air Forces or Missile forces are probably their best bet. The Black Sea Fleet has pulled back to Novorossiysk from Stevastopol, out of missile range.
“After they said the Moskva sank in an accident, they launched a rain of cruise missiles against several Uke based including the one by Lviv”
Russia used to keep up a steady drumbeat of missile strikes across the whole of the Ukraine, day and night. No more.
If you look at the live update map (https://liveuamap.com/ ), those seem to have dried up. It has been that way at least for the last week or two, since I started looking again. Just short range Artillery along the Forward Edge of the Battle Area. It seems that they have expended most or all of their stocks of long range precision guided munitions (Tochkas, Iskanders, Kalibrs), as had been predicted. The Naval missiles are now out of range of Odessa or Western Ukraine, because of how far the Fleet has pulled back. Reportedly, they even expended a lot of their S-400 Air Defense missiles, converting them for ground attack use.
They probably saved a few for special occasions, but they seem to be on a tight budget.
“It seems that they have expended most or all of their stocks of long range precision guided munitions (Tochkas, Iskanders, Kalibrs), as had been predicted.”
Another possibility for the sharp falloff in the number of Russian deep strikes in the Ukraine, might be new Ukrainian Air Defense capability.