[Cronos]

It is absolutely certain the flagship of the Black Sea fleet, cruiser Moskva sent distress signals, Russian ships swarmed over the area and the crew abandoned ship. Russian navy said so, they wouldn’t have lied their capital ship was sunk if it was perfectly fine. Russian story is there was a fire onboard, which spread to magazines and the ship blew up.

While their story is not impossible, a fire like that on a surface vessel requires suicidal levels of ineptitude. Say what you will of the Russian navy, if this happened on a flagship of the fleet, you’d expect their other ships would be blowing up on a monthly basis.

So Ukrainian version of events, where they struck the cruiser with two missiles, is the more plauisble of the two. Exact details may not be correct. For example, it is possible the ship intercepted one or even both missiles with CIWS, but the sharpnel and mass of the missile still hit the ship and detonated some of the ordnance on deck. This is currently unverifiable and may remain such for some time, until the wreck is located or we get images of the stricken ship still afloat perhaps.

But overall, it does seem like a Ukrainian attack sunk the flagship of the Black Sea fleet

[logi_cal869]

While their story is not impossible, a fire like that on a surface vessel requires suicidal levels of ineptitude.

Attributing "suicidal levels of ineptitude" to naval personnel - which also applies to USN - is rather desperate (to state nothing of inflammatory toward USN personnel). Clayton Hartwig's family - to cite merely one incident - continues to try to clear his name to this day...from a narrative that THE US GOVERNMENT INVENTED. And it wasn't in a war theater.

Furthermore, "cruiser Moskva sent distress signals," and those transmissions were intercepted. It is equally plausible that the Ukranians saw an opportunity, but I'm not the one desperate to fit one version of the 'truth' to a narrative egregiously lacking facts.

Use lots of lotion.

[buwaya]

That particular ship had lots of ordnance on deck. Those huge SSMs in thin canisters. The rocket fuel alone would have been devastating if ignited. It was an eggshell armed with hammers.

[Trinity5]

"While their story is not impossible, a fire like that on a surface vessel requires suicidal levels of ineptitude. Say what you will of the Russian navy, if this happened on a flagship of the fleet, you’d expect their other ships would be blowing up on a monthly basis."

So you're saying we should be losing an aircraft carrier every month due to fire and ineptitude?