It was impossible, so they did it.
In mid-April, Ukraine managed to hit the Moskva, Russian flagship in the Black Sea with a Neptune missile, and send it to the bottom. What could not happen then happened: according to an article in Ukrainian Pravda , taken up in particular by The War Zone , it took a weather miracle for the Kiev troops to pull off this masterstroke, one of the most spectacular in the ongoing war.
The American site has some doubts about the story, fascinating and quite crazy, offered by the multiple sources interviewed by the Ukrainian Pravda. It is thus explained that other Neptune missiles had already been sent in the direction of Russian ships in the Black Sea, but that they had so far been intercepted by enemy anti-aircraft defenses.
But on April 13, the radar of a Neptune battery detected the presence in the Black Sea of a massive object, anchored at about 120 kilometers. The size of the thing left a priori no doubt: it was a Russian ship, and the decision was made to launch the projectile.
But this detection was quite improbable, almost impossible. “Due to the presence of dense cloud cover over the sea, the radar signal may have reflected from the sky to the sea, and then from the sea to the sky ,” suggests a source at Ukrainian Pravda.
“At the time of the invasion, we had no radar capable of such a range, and the Russians knew it. But because the clouds were so low and this corridor between the sky and the sea could lead nowhere, the radar unexpectedly detected the Moskva .
Unconscious
The Russians believed themselves safe; they were not. In a climate that seemed to make any attack even more unlikely, they were so sure of their safety that the ship’s detection and air defense systems had been disabled, the Pravda article explains. After all, why fear something that can’t happen?
Because it can happen, precisely, against all odds, and the improbable is not the impossible. Once miraculously spotted by Ukrainian radars, two Neptune missiles were fired at the Moskva. It took them six minutes to reach their target, defenseless.
A second weather miracle then occurred: a storm rose on the scene of the tragedy which probably claimed more than 200 victims , and which was one of the first to shed harsh light on the dubious methods of the Russian armies. -to the families of the victims.
The weather was so bad that Ukraine was unable to launch a drone to check the success or failure of the Neptune missiles fired. This storm was also rough enough to prevent other Russian ships from coming quickly enough to rescue the Moskva and her sailors who were still alive.
It was only the next day, when the elements had calmed down, that the Ukrainians were able to verify the success of their surprise operation. Battered by rough seas and while being towed to shore to be rescued, the Moskva sank, forever.