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Moskva fire and escalating threats on 13 April 2022
Summary
A look back at a day when a Black Sea warship fire, new US aid and Russian warnings to Kyiv and to arms convoys converged.
What did 13 April 2022 reveal about the direction of the war in Ukraine? A burning flagship, a large new package of Western weapons and a Russian warning aimed at Kyiv all arrived within the same twenty-four hours.
The cruiser Moskva
The most striking event at sea was the fire aboard the Russian Navy cruiser Moskva in the Black Sea. Moskva, formerly Slava, was a guided missile cruiser commissioned in 1983, the lead ship of the Project 1164 Atlant class and the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, with a crew of 510.
Both sides confirmed that the warship had caught fire, but they disagreed about why. Ukrainian officials and the US defence department said Ukraine had hit the cruiser with two Neptune cruise missiles. The Ukrainian military said it had struck the ship with Neptune anti-ship missiles hours after reports that it was ablaze. The Russian defence ministry gave a different account, according to Russian state media: the fire on board set off ammunition, seriously damaging the vessel, and the cruiser was evacuated.
Weapons flowing in, warnings flowing out
The United States said on 13 April 2022 that it was sending a further $800 million in military aid to Ukraine. The package included artillery systems and artillery rounds, armoured personnel carriers, Mi-17 helicopters transferred from Afghanistan, 300 Switchblade drones and unmanned surface vehicles for coastal defence. The last item is notable given the maritime events of the same day.
Moscow responded in rhetoric. Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said US and NATO vehicles transporting weapons on Ukrainian territory were legal military targets. Separately, the Russian defence ministry said it would begin to target Ukrainian decision-makers, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and command centres in Kyiv if Ukrainian forces kept attacking Russian territory.
Solidarity in Kyiv
Against that backdrop, the presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — Andrzej Duda, Gitanas Nausėda, Egils Levits and Alar Karis — arrived in Kyiv and met Zelenskyy. Their visit took place on the same day Russia publicly spoke of striking leadership targets in the capital.
The previous day, US President Joe Biden had called the Russian war in Ukraine a genocide. On 13 April 2022, Colombian President Iván Duque said in an interview that what was happening in Ukraine was genocide and had to stop, calling it madness. This followed Colombia increasing its energy production to help meet Western needs after all supplies from Russia were cut off.
On the ground
The fighting continued elsewhere. Oleh Synyehubov, governor of Kharkiv Oblast, said seven people had been killed and 22 injured in the oblast over the previous 24 hours. In the siege of Mariupol, the Russian defence ministry claimed that around 1,000 Ukrainian marines had surrendered; Ukraine made no comment.
On 12 April 2022, Ukraine's security service had detained Viktor Medvedchuk, described as a key pro-Russian Ukrainian politician and oligarch, in what Zelenskyy called a special operation. Zelenskyy said he planned to use Medvedchuk in a future exchange for Ukrainian prisoners of war. Ukraine's postal service also issued a stamp that day depicting the attack on Snake Island, where Ukrainian troops refused to surrender.
What the day showed
The events of 13 April 2022 pulled in several directions at once. Western military support grew in both size and variety, extending to coastal defence. Russia answered with explicit threats against weapons convoys and against the Ukrainian leadership in Kyiv. Meanwhile, the fire on the Black Sea Fleet's flagship, with rival explanations from Kyiv and Moscow, became one of the day's defining images, while neighbouring presidents travelled to the capital in person.
