‘We need answers’: relatives seek Moskva warship’s missing crew | Russia

For days after the Moskva cruiser sank in the Black Sea, Yulia Tsyvova had been desperately searching for information about her son Andrei.

Like hundreds of other Russian families of the crew members, she had not been told whether he had survived the reported Ukrainian missile attack that had sunk the Russian flagship of the Black Sea fleet.

Then on Monday morning she received a call from the Russian defence ministry. Her son was dead.

“He was only 19, he was a conscript,” said Tsyvova, who wept as she spoke by telephone. “They didn’t tell me anything else, no information on when the funeral would be.

“I am sure he isn’t the only one who died.”

Family members of sailors who served onboard the Moskva are demanding answers as the ministry has sought to suppress information about what happened to the ship or its estimated 510-strong crew.

The total number of dead, wounded and missing remains a state secret. Tsyvov’s death, which has not been previously reported, is only the second confirmed from the warship. Another three families have gone public saying they cannot find their sons who were serving onboard.

Media reports suggest the number of casualties from the attack will be far higher, and the efforts to suppress information about the deaths have raised comparisons with the Kursk submarine incident that left 118 sailors dead and struck a blow to the prestige of a young President Vladimir Putin in 2000.

“This regime has never been very transparent about casualties,” said Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center, pointing to Russia’s military operations in Ukraine and Syria or the investigations into attacks at Beslan and the Dubrovka theatre. “A lot of this has precedence and it’s not something very new or very surprising.”

New information on the young sailors who died will also renew scrutiny about the Russian government’s use of conscripts in battle, something Putin had explicitly denied was the case early in the war.

The defence ministry was forced to admit it had deployed conscripts after some were captured in Ukraine in the first weeks of the war. It claimed it would no longer use them.

But several parents of Moskva crew members have told the Guardian and others that their sons onboard the ship were indeed conscripts and not professional soldiers on contract.

“A conscript who isn’t supposed to see active fighting is among those missing in action,” wrote Dmitry Shkrebets, whose son Yegor was a cook on the ship and is listed as missing in action. “Guys, how can you be missing in action in the middle of the high seas?!!!”

Photos and a video purporting to show the Moskva shortly before it sank emerged on Monday, nearly four days after it sank. The images showed that its lifeboats had been deployed, indicating an order was likely given to abandon ship.

Families of several crew members have said they managed to locate their family members alive.

Eskender Djeparov said he recognised his brother Akbar in a video released by the defence ministry that showed sailors from the Moskva meeting a top admiral in Sevastopol after the ship sank.

“We were very happy when we saw him in the video of the…