The United States provided Ukraine with intelligence about the location of the Moskva cruiser, which allowed the Ukrainian Armed Forces to successfully attack the ship.

This is reported by the American edition of the New York Times, citing American officials.

At the same time, two interlocutors of journalists said that Ukraine independently received data on the whereabouts of “Moscow”, and the United States simply provided it with confirmation of this information.

Journalists noted that immediately after the strike, the administration of United States President Joe Biden remained silent about the incident, refusing to even confirm the fact that Ukrainian forces had launched a strike on the Moskva cruiser, but in recent days, US officials have confirmed that target designation data from US intelligence sources Ukraine a few hours before the launch of the Neptune missiles by the ship.

Officials declined to elaborate on exactly what information was shared, but one official said the information went beyond simply reporting a ship’s location in the Black Sea.

At the same time, the Biden administration refused to publicly confirm that US intelligence provided Ukrainian forces with information for guidance purposes. One official in a comment to the publication said that the United States provided confirmation to the Ukrainian military about the whereabouts of the ship, while his other colleagues said that “it is not certain that Ukraine could hit the ship without the help of the United States,” the journalists noted.

After the publication of this material, US Department of Defense spokesman John Kirby said that Ukraine has “its own intelligence capabilities to track and target Russian ships.” In the event of a strike on “Moscow”, the Ukrainian forces were assigned to their own data, the Pentagon spokesman assured. Also last month, in response to a reporter’s question, Kirby stressed that the United States had not provided Ukraine with information for target designation.

Recall that on the evening of April 13, anti-ship missiles “Neptune” let down the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation, the missile cruiser “Moskva” . At first, Moscow did not even want to officially acknowledge such a big loss for their fleet. The Russian Defense Ministry gave conflicting statements that a fire broke out on board, but it was still buoyant. However, two days later, the Kremlin still had to admit that the Moskva had sunk.

The US Department of Defense confirmed that the cruiser sank due to a hit by Ukrainian missiles, and not the detonation of ammunition. 

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