Before the sinking of the cruiser, Dimitri, a father living in Crimea, was in regular contact with his 20-year-old son Igor, young ship’s cook Moskva. A communication via WhatsApp which disappears at the same time as the flagship of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. The cruiser sank on Thursday April 14. kyiv claims to have hit it with two missiles, a version corroborated by the Pentagon. Moscow evokes, for its part, an accidental fire in an ammunition depot.
>> War in Ukraine: what we know about the “Moskva”, the cruiser sunk in the Black Sea
Be that as it may, this father immediately sets out to find his son after the shipwreck. “With other relatives of seafarers, we went to hospitals in the region and asked for the names of those who were there., he explains to franceinfo. Officially, the Russian fleet claims that the crew of the cruiser was evacuated in time. In fact, the greatest vagueness surrounds the fate of this crew.
“All we were told was that there was no information about it. No deaths, no injuries.”
Dimitri father of a Moskva sailorat franceinfo
Two days after the sinking, he sees this video showing the captain of the ship saluting his crew. A hundred sailors out of the 500 usually on board. Impossible to say if his son is present. He then gets in touch with other parents to try to find out more. A mother in particular, without much success.
“His son refuses to talksays this father. He says he doesn’t remember anything, that he was unconscious. This mother is not allowed to see her son. She doesn’t know where he is hospitalized, as if we wanted to hide it from her.“Dimitri contains his anger: “All I can say is that it’s serious!” He stops before adding, “If I go further, I risk criminal prosecution…”
The father of a “Moskva” sailor faced with the silence of the Russian authorities – The report by Jean-Sébastien Soldaïni
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