Reflected between sky and water

Low clouds helped Ukrainian radars locate Russian missile cruiser Moskva when out of normal range

The Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda has reconstructed the chain of events that led to the sinking of the guided missile cruiser Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Journalists spoke with dozens of military experts, discovering that atypical radar readings due to low reflective clouds enabled a Ukrainian Neptune missile operator to reach the Russian ship when just within range.

Around 4:00 p.m. local time on April 13, 2022, a Ukrainian Neptune missile complex operator received a surprising reading from a radar that normally wouldn’t distinguish targets beyond 18 kilometers (or just over 11 miles) away. The radar signaled that a “major target” was 120 kilometers (around 75 miles) from the shore. That “major target” could only be the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s flagship — the missile cruiser Moskva.

The cruiser had entered the range of Ukrainian missile systems on its own. “After several minutes of heavy hesitation and consultations,” the Neptune operator ordered the launch of two missiles at the Russian ship.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the missiles had struck their target. Bayraktar drone operators declined to help with reconnaissance, since they didn’t want to lose their drones. The Russian cruiser began to move, with four other ships approaching it. When it became clear that a tugboat was moving towards the Moskva from Crimea, the Ukrainian side realized that the cruiser must be in critical condition. The night after the strike, one of Ukraine’s top security officers messaged Ukrainska Pravda: “Moskva is over,” he wrote.

This new information runs against the grain of earlier reports, such as Joshua Yaffa’s reporting for The New Yorker: Yaffa attributed Ukrainian intelligence on the Russian cruiser’s location to NATO sources. The New York Times, too, reported that Kyiv received the coordinates for its Neptune strike from the U.S. intelligence. The Belgian Navy Recognition journal attributed the information directly to a “U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon aircraft.”

In response to these narratives, a Ukrainian military source told Ukrainska Pravda that the country’s armed forces are very much “capable of solving incredibly complex problems” on their own. Given that Ukraine was continuously tracking Moskva with the aid of satellites, he added, the main problem was “not to find Moskva but to be able to reach it.”