SEVASTOPOL, April 15. /TASS/. The memory of the Black Sea Fleet’s sunken Guards missile cruiser flagship Moskva should be preserved in Sevastopol as the Fleet’s chief naval base, historian and senator from Sevastopol Yekaterina Altabayeva said on Friday.

"We will, of course, think about how to preserve the memory. This will be necessarily done. We will find the way to do it and will preserve it. Words fail and the heart is breaking since it [the cruiser] was part of Sevastopol," Altabayeva told TASS on Friday.

As the Russian Defense Ministry reported earlier on Friday, the flagship Moskva lost stability due to hull damage sustained in a fire resulting from the detonation of its ammunition and sank in a heavy storm while being towed to the destination point. The causes of the fire are being established, it said.

The Russian Black Sea Fleet’s flagship Moskva had always been a symbol for Sevastopol and its loss is a pain for the city’s residents, Sevastopol Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said on Friday.

"For Sevastopol, the cruiser had been a genuine symbol. And, of course, we are all feeling pain today," Razvozhayev wrote on his Telegram channel.

The governor posted a 2008 photo of the warship entering the Sevastopol Bay and being greeted with Russian flags on the shore and on small vessels.

Black Sea Fleet’s flagship Moskva

The guided missile cruiser Moskva entered service with the Soviet Navy in 1982. In the early 1990s, the Moskva (named the Slava at that time) could have been decommissioned. The warship re-entered service with the Russian Navy in 1999 thanks to assistance by the Moscow government led by Mayor Yury Luzhkov, following which it received its current name.

In the second half of 2015, the cruiser led the Russian Navy’s standing Mediterranean taskforce where it was shielding Russia’s Hmeymim airbase in Syria with its air defense weapons. On July 22, 2016, the cruiser Moskva was awarded the naval Order of Nakhimov. By 2020, the Russian shipbuilders had completed the warship’s repairs and upgrade that lasted several years. The flagship Moskva was expected to serve for a record 60 years until 2040.

The cruiser Moskva is the Project 1164 ‘Atlant’ lead ship. As its main armament, the warship carries 16 launchers of P-1000 Vulkan missiles with a strike range of over 700 km.