https://tass.com/society/1123855Christian relic, a True Cross piece, to be kept at Russia’s Black Sea fleet flagship
The relic is a wood chip only several millimeters long embedded into a 19th century metal cross
A Christian relic, a piece of the True Cross on which the believers say Jesus Christ was crucified would be kept at the Moskva missile cruiser, the Black Sea fleet flagship, archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Sevastopol District Sergiy Khalyuta told TASS.
He explained that the relic is a wood chip only several millimeters long. It is embedded into a 19th century metal cross, which, in turn, is stored in a special reliquary.
"This relic used to belong to a Catholic church, but was acquired by anonymous patrons of arts, and it was their will to send the relic to the [Black Sea] fleet. The Moskva cruiser has an onboard chapel, where services take place," Khalyuta said.
He underscored that such relics are very rare and important for all Christians — both the Catholics and the Orthodox. Russia is in possession of several items with pieces of the True Cross embedded into them; usually, they can be found in large temples. Purchasing such relics has become possible after European churches began to close and sell their property.
The archpriest also disclosed that the relic had already been handed over to Vice Admiral Igor Osipov, the commander of the Black Sea fleet, and is currently at the fleet headquarters. It will be delivered to the Moskva cruiser shortly.
The Moskva cruiser is the lead ship of the Project 1164 Atlant class. It entered service in 1983. Its main armament is 16 P-1000 Vulkan missile launchers.
The last major warship sunk in combat since WW2 was the ARA "Belgrano" (ex - USS "Phoenix") during the Faklands War in 1982.
https://www.erienewsnow.com/story/46297823/moskva-sinking-what-really-happened-to-the-pride-of-russias-fleetThe Russian guided-missile cruiser Moskva rests deep beneath the Black Sea this morning.
Ukraine claims that it hit Moskva with missiles, causing it to sink. Russia has insisted the reason for the sinking was a fire. On Friday, the United States supported Ukraine's account, with a senior defense official saying that it believes that two Ukrainian Neptune missiles hit the Russian warship in the Black Sea.
Whether the ship lies at the bottom of the sea as the victim of Ukrainian missiles, Russian incompetence, bad luck or a combination of all three remains disputed. What is certain, though, is that the biggest wartime loss of a naval ship in 40 years will raise troubling questions not only for Moscow, but for military planners around the world.
What caused the sinking?
The ship sank off the coast of Ukraine in the Black Sea on Thursday. Ukraine says it hit the Moskva with anti-ship cruise missiles and that these sparked the fire that detonated the ammunition.
Russia has put out its own version of events: Russia's Defense Ministry says a fire of unknown origin detonated the ship's stored ammunition and the resulting explosions left the Moskva with structural damage. It says the warship then sank amid rough seas as it was being towed to a nearby port.
According to Russian state news agency TASS report, which cited an unnamed source, the crew of the ship was delivered to the port of Sevastopol in Crimea. TASS did not provide any additional details about the number of crew members rescued from the ship.
The Moskva was armed with a range of anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles as well as torpedoes, naval guns and missile defense systems, meaning it would have had massive amounts of explosives aboard.
US intelligence officials do not believe the ship was carrying nuclear weapons at the time of its sinking, two senior US officials with knowledge of the latest US intelligence assessment told CNN.
When was the last time a ship of this size was lost in war?
The Argentine cruiser General Belgrano was torpedoed and sunk by the British nuclear-powered submarine HMS Conqueror on May 2, 1982, during the Falkland Islands war.
The General Belgrano and the Moskva were of similar size -- each about 600 feet (182 meters) long and displacing 12,000 tons -- though the crew of about 1,100 aboard the General Belgrano was more than double the size of the Moskva's crew of about 500.
Russia has not disclosed the number of casualties occurred during the Moskva's fire and subsequent sinking. A total of 323 crew died when the General Belgrano went down.
What does the loss of the Moskva mean for the Russian war effort?
The biggest effect may be on Russian morale. As the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet, the Moskva was one of its most visible assets in the Ukraine war. Though Moscow carefully manages news about the war in Russia, it will be hard to hide the sudden absence of such a large ship.
And its loss will raise doubts about Russia's warfighting abilities, whether it was due to enemy action or accident.
"Both explanations for the sinking of the Moskva indicate possible Russian deficiencies -- either poor air defenses or incredibly lax safety procedures and damage control on the Black Sea Fleet's flagship," analysts Mason Clark, Kateryna Stepanenko, and George Barros at the Institute for the Study of War wrote in their daily war briefing.
Carl Schuster, a former US Navy captain, said the doubts went all the way to the Kremlin.
"It raises questions about naval competence 10 years after (Russian President Vladimir) Putin announced he was going to restore the navy's capabilities, morale and professionalism," Schuster said.
"It seems he has not been able to keep any of his promises for any of Russia's military services," Schuster said, noting Russia had suffered setbacks on land too.
But analysts are split on what impact the sinking will have on the Russian invasion.
The ISW analysts see it as a relatively minor blow, saying the ship was mostly used for cruise missile strikes on Ukrainian logistic centers and airfields. Russia has land-based systems and strike aircraft that can do the same thing, they said.
However, they added that if it was indeed a Ukrainian missile that led to the sinking, the Russian navy would have to rethink its operations, possibly moving ships farther from Ukrainian territory and adjusting their air defenses.
In Washington, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the Moskva's main mission was air defense for the Russian forces in the Black Sea.
"It will have an impact on that capability, certainly in the near term," Kirby told reporters.
The Orthodox Church Plays A Major Role In The Russian Military
https://time.com/6167332/putin-russian-orthodox-church-war-ukraine/To Vladimir Putin, Orthodox Christianity is a tool for asserting Moscow’s rights over sovereign Ukraine. In his February televised address announcing the recent invasion of Ukraine, he argued the inhabitants of that “ancient Russian land” were Orthodox from time immemorial, and now faced persecution from an illegitimate regime in Kyiv.
Led by Patriarch Kirill, the Russian Orthodox Church is one of the most tangible cultural bonds between Russia and Ukraine. The gilded domes of Kyiv’s Monastery of the Caves and St. Sophia Cathedral have beckoned pilgrims from across both lands for nigh on a thousand years.
With religious rhetoric, Putin taps into a long tradition that imagines a Greater Russia extending across present-day Ukraine and Belarus, in a combined territory known as Holy Rus’. Nostalgic for empire, this sees the spiritual unity of the three nations as key to Russia’s earthly power as an exceptional civilization. Encouraged by Putin’s “special operation,” Russian Orthodox nationalists are excitedly recalling the prophecy of a twentieth-century saint from Chernihiv, now one of Ukraine’s beleaguered cities. “Just as the One Lord God is the indivisible Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” this monk fortold, “so Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus together are Holy Rus’ and cannot be separated.”
Putin is not the first modern Moscow ruler to co-opt this idea in seeking to consolidate secular power. During the darkest hours of World War Two, Stalin reinstated the Russian Orthodox Church—having almost bled it dry—and replaced the communist Internationale with a new national anthem. Its lyrics asserted that the Soviet Union was “unbreakable, welded together forever by Great Rus’.”
Around 2007 the Kremlin further advanced the allied concept of Russky Mir, or the Russian World, initially a soft power project aimed at promoting Russian culture worldwide and likened by Patriarch Kirill to the British Commonwealth. Putin, however—unsettled by mass protests against his authoritarian regime in 2011-12 as well as those that toppled his vassal in Ukraine in 2013-14—has since twisted both Holy Rus’ and the Russian World to serve a more violent agenda.
Outsized emphasis now goes to Russia’s tradition of warrior saints. It was by remarkable coincidence, Putin told thousands of flag-waving supporters at a recent Moscow stadium rally, that the military operation in Ukraine commenced on the birthday of Saint Theodore Ushakov, an eighteenth-century Russian naval commander famed for never losing a single battle. “He once said, ‘This threat will serve to glorify Russia,’” Putin enthused. “That was the case then, is now, and ever shall be!”
Cast aside is an alternative Christian holy tradition of defiant passive resistance, exemplified by the first saints to be canonized in medieval Rus’, the Kyiv princes Boris and Gleb, who accepted martyrdom at the hands of their brother. “They gave up without a fight,” Putin once remarked in disgust. “This cannot be an example for us.” With the attack on Kyiv’s current ruler, even small acts of Christian pacifism by Russians are quashed. A remote village priest was fined hundreds of dollars for publicly refusing to support the war and thus “call black—white, evil—good.” A young woman was detained outside Moscow’s main Orthodox cathedral for holding up a simple sign bearing the biblical commandment, “Thou shallt not kill.”
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/15/2022 02:41PM by anybody.