MOSCOW: The commander of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, whom Kyiv claimed to have killed in a recent missile attack, appeared in images distributed on Tuesday by Russia’s defense ministry.
Ukraine said earlier this week it had killed Admiral Viktor Sokolov and thirty-four officers in an unprecedented attack on the fleet’s naval headquarters in the annexed Crimean peninsula last week.
Sokolov was pictured in military uniform attending via video link a meeting held on Tuesday and chaired by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, AFP news agency reported.
The Russian Ministry of Defense has release footage of a meeting that shows the head of #russia's Black Sea Fleet on a video call with Shoigu – purportedly contradicting Ukrainian claims that he was killed in a missile strike against the Fleet's HQ in Sevastopol pic.twitter.com/sz0mb5ZYDA
— Michael A. Horowitz (@michaelh992) September 26, 2023
The defense ministry issued a statement, which did not name Sokolov, saying the meeting had taken place earlier in the day.
In an 8-minute video distributed later by the ministry, Viktor Sokolov appears on screen several times, without speaking. The Kremlin told journalists moments before the statement was published that it had “no information” regarding the status of the commander and deferred queries to the defense ministry.
It had said on the day of the strike that one serviceman was missing, after having initially reported that one person had been dead.
Major Blow to Russia
The attack marked a major blow for Moscow, which has suffered a string of strikes on the strategically important port of Sevastopol in recent months. Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014 and is an important military and logistics hub for Moscow’s military.
