The two Ukrainian “Neptune” anti-ship missiles on April 14 not only destroyed the 187-meter-long flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet “Moskva”, but also massively damaged the self-esteem of the Russian army leadership and the Kremlin elite – and they might destroy one of the most valuable relics of the Russian Orthodox Church.
An article by the Russian news agency “TASS” dated February 26, 2020 suggests that there was also a millimeter-sized piece of wood on board the sunken “Moskva”, which is invaluable to some believing Christians – a piece that has been saved over the centuries of the “true cross of Christ”.
In its report two years ago, “TASS” quoted the priest Sergiy Khalyuta from Sevastopol in Crimea: The cleric described that the Russian Orthodox Church acquired this rare relic “in the West” and has now handed it over to Vice Admiral Igor Osipov . The small splinter of wood, embedded in a larger metal cross, has since been kept in the ship’s chapel of the missile cruiser “Moskva”.
The Kremlin has so far remained silent about the whereabouts of this valuable relic – but after the worst Russian ship disaster since the naval battle of Tsushima in 1905, the Russian government is hiding even more: So far, little is known about how many of the 500 sailors died in the explosions, fire and survived the sinking of the “Moskva”.
Likewise, there is silence as to whether the “Moskva”, which was designed as an “aircraft carrier killer”, had nuclear warheads on board. If nuclear weapons were on the ship, then this would be a huge threat to all of Europe.
And only the new sonar recordings from the seabed revealed that next to the wreck of the guided missile cruiser there is also a crashed 40-meter-long Mi-26 helicopter – one can only guess what kind of drama must have happened during the rescue attempts.
