In the days after the casualty, Russian state media claimed that the vessel had sustained a fire and an ammunition magazine explosion, and that all of her 500-odd crewmembers had evacuated. However, images from the scene told a different story: the vessel appeared to have sustained two hull breaches near the waterline on the port side, just beneath the stack, and extensive fire damage amidships. <\/p>\n
A memorial service for "the ship and sailors" was held at the Russian Navy's Sevastopol base on April 15, and an estimated 100-250 members of the crew were in attendance, based on official video footage – well short of the full complement of about 500. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, parents of missing sailors from Moskva <\/em>began taking to Russian social media to report their frustration with the official response. One parent, Dmitry Shkrebets, told Newsweek that he had received two competing stories. Moskva's <\/em>officers quietly acknowledged that his son was missing, while the Russian Ministry of Defense maintained that he was not; Shkrebets described the official response as a "wall of indifferent, frenzied silence."<\/p>\n On Friday, the Kremlin made an effort to reconcile conflicting versions of the event by releasing its first casualty count. One member of the cruiser's crew died and 27 more are missing, according to the official accounting. The count aligns with an earlier report from the U.S.-backed outlet Radio Liberty, which received the same casualty numbers from the wife of a deceased crewmember.<\/p>\n Other informal estimates have run higher. Last week, Russian language outlet Novaya Gazeta reported on a conversation with the mother of a crewmember who survived the attack. The mother relayed a story of heavy damage and loss of life, including an estimated 40 dead, a large number of severely wounded crewmembers and many more missing. <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/eolog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Family-Members-Look-for-Answers-After-Loss-of-the-Cruiser.jpg\")
Kommuna at Sebastopol circa 2008 (George Chernilevsky \/ public domain)<\/em><\/p>\n