(IP)- On Thursday morning, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that Russia's Moskva missile cruiser, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, had been hit by heavy fire and the following detonation of ammunition.

Iran PressEurope: The ministry said: "As result of the fire that hit the Moskva missile cruiser, the ammunition has detonated. The ship has been seriously damaged," Sputnik reported. 

Simultaneously with the statement of the Russian Ministry of Defense about the incident on this warship, which is the most important warship in the Russian Black Sea Fleet, some sources claim that a Ukrainian missile hit the ship. 

The statement added that all crew members had been evacuated safely and that the cause of the fire was being investigated. 

Other details of the incident and the cause of the fire are not given at the moment.

In early February, the cruiser conducted exercises to defend the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea.

The ship, whose initial name was "Slava," was laid down in 1976 in Nikolaev and commissioned in 1983. 

On February 24, in response to a request for help from the leaders of the Donbas republics, Vladimir Putin announced the launch of a special Russian military operation in Ukraine, stressing that Moscow had no intention of occupying Ukrainian territory. It is the disarmament and de-Nazification of Ukraine. Not only have Western countries failed to help ease tensions in Ukraine, but they have exacerbated the conflict by supplying arms to Kyiv.

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