Reuters
While Russian authorities have played down the fallout of Ukraine blasting one of its warships to smithereens in Crimea, dozens of Russian sailors have reportedly been deemed “missing without a trace” following the blast.
Citing anonymous sources on Wednesday, the independent outlet Astra reported that 23 people on board the Novocherkassk were injured in the Dec. 26 attack, in addition to 33 missing. In scenes reminiscent of last year’s Moskva warship fiasco—in which the Russian Defense Ministry desperately tried to conceal sailor deaths from a similar Ukrainian attack—Moscow has confirmed only that the warship was “damaged” while ignoring the fate of the sailors.
But even that admission from defense officials was apparently an outrageous understatement.