Russia promised this Friday, April 15 to intensify its strikes after the sinking of its flagship Moskva. According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), a missile factory in the kyiv region was hit.
AFP relies on a statement by the Russian Ministry of Defense which announced the destruction of a missile production workshop in the Vizar factory located in the suburbs of kyiv.
According to AFP teams on site, a factory workshop and an administrative building next door, in the town of Vyshneveh, about thirty kilometers from the Ukrainian capital, were seriously impacted.
In addition, about fifty cars parked in the parking lot not far away had their windows blown out.
Russian response
This decision is a response sent following the Ukrainian attacks that Russia has described as “terrorist”.
“The number and scale of missile strikes on Kyiv sites will increase in response to all terrorist-type attacks and sabotage carried out on Russian territory by the nationalist regime in Kyiv,” warned the Russian Ministry of defense.
As a reminder, a fire broke out in the night from Wednesday to Thursday, on the 186-meter-long missile cruiser, causing the explosion of ammunition and the evacuation of some 500 crew members.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said Thursday morning that the fire had been contained and that the explosions had stopped. “The Moskva cruiser retains its buoyancy and will be towed,” the military authorities had indicated.
For its part, the Ukrainian army claimed to have hit the ship with “Neptune” cruise missiles.
snub for the Russian army
Based in Sebastopol in Crimea, this flagship built in 1983 in the USSR was notably engaged in the Russian campaigns in Georgia and Syria.
Russia suffered one of its biggest setbacks in its offensive against Ukraine with the burning and evacuation of the cruiser Moskva, its flagship in the Black Sea, which the Ukrainian military claims hit with cruise missiles #AFP pic.twitter.com/XEk4JzVGGP
– Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) April 14, 2022
The decommissioning of this emblematic building would constitute a major snub for the Russian army. It would come after the destruction at the end of March of another Russian warship in the port of Berdiansk, on the Sea of Azov.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych quipped that the Moskva is the same boat that had asked a handful of Ukrainian military personnel stationed on a small Black Sea island to surrender, only to hear a response over the radio: “Russian military ship, fuck you!”. The recording of this exchange had gone around the world and served as a leitmotif for the Ukrainian resistance.
