The sinking of the Russian Black Sea flagship Moskva on April 14 was the first destruction of a major warship in combat since the Falklands war 40 years ago, when both the U.K. and Argentina lost large surface ships in the cold waters of the South Atlantic.
For the Russians, you would have to go back to World War II to find a comparable loss. How will this dramatic event affect the war in Ukraine? And what are the lessons for navies worldwide?
I have toured Russian ships on several occasions (including in Sevastopol before the Russian invasion), and the surface ships produced in the 1970s and 1980s, like the Slava-class Moskva, have several weaknesses in construction and manning.