KYIV, Ukraine -- The flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet, a guided-missile cruiser that became a potent target of Ukrainian defiance in the opening days of the war, sank Thursday after it was heavily damaged in the latest setback for Moscow's invasion.
Ukrainian officials said their forces hit the vessel with missiles, while Russia acknowledged a fire aboard the Moskva but no attack. U.S. and other Western officials could not confirm what caused the blaze.
The loss of the warship named for the Russian capital is a symbolic loss for Moscow as its troops regroup for a renewed offensive in eastern Ukraine after retreating from much of the north, including the capital, Kyiv.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the ship sank in a storm while being towed to a port. Russia earlier said the flames on the ship, which would typically have 500 sailors aboard, forced the entire crew to evacuate. Later it said the blaze had been contained.
The Associated Press could not independently verify the incident, but Ukraine and its supporters consider it an iconic moment of defiance. The country recently unveiled a postage stamp commemorating it.
The news of the flagship's damage overshadowed Russian claims of advances in the southern port city of Mariupol, where Moscow's forces have been battling the Ukrainians since the early days of the invasion in some of the heaviest fighting of the war.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Wednesday that 1,026 Ukrainian troops surrendered at a metals factory in the city. But Vadym Denysenko, adviser to Ukraine's interior minister, rejected the claim, telling Current Time TV that "the battle over the seaport is still ongoing today."
It was unclear how many forces were still defending Mariupol.
Russian state television broadcast footage that it said was from Mariupol showing dozens of men in camouflage walking with their hands up and carrying others on stretchers. One man held a white flag.
Mariupol has been the scene of the some the war's worst suffering. Dwindling numbers of Ukrainian defenders are holding out against a Russian siege that has trapped well over 100,000 civilians in desperate need of food, water and heating.
The mayor said Monday that more than 10,000 civilians have died in the siege, and that the death toll could surpass 20,000. Weeks of attacks and privation left bodies "carpeted through the streets," he said.
Mariupol's capture matters for Russia because it would allow its forces in the south, which came up through the annexed Crimean Peninsula, to fully link up with troops in the eastern Donbas region, Ukraine's industrial heartland and the target of the coming offensive.
The Russian military continues to move helicopters and other equipment together for such an effort, according to a senior U.S. defense official, and it will likely add more ground combat units "over coming days." But it's still unclear when Russia could launch a bigger offensive in the Donbas.
Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukraine in the Donbas since 2014, the same year Russia seized Crimea. Russia has recognized the independence of the rebel regions in the Donbas.
The loss of the Moskva could delay any new, wide-ranging offensive.
On Thursday, other Russian ships that were also in the northern Black Sea moved farther south after the Moskva caught fire, said a senior U.S. defense official.
Before the Moskva sank, Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine's defense minister, told The Associated Press its removal would mean "we can only have a sigh of relief because this means that fewer missiles will reach Ukrainian cities."
The U.S. was not able to confirm Ukraine's claims of striking the warship, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Thursday. Still, he called it "a big blow to Russia."
"They've had to kind of choose between two stories: One story is that it was just incompetence, and the other was that they came under attack, and neither is a particularly good outcome for them," Sullivan told the Economic Club of Washington.
Russia invaded on Feb. 24 and has lost potentially thousands of fighters. The conflict has killed untold numbers of Ukrainian civilians and forced millions more to flee.
It's also further inflated prices at grocery stores and gasoline pumps, while dragging on the global economy. The head of the International Monetary Fund said Thursday that the war helped push the organization to downgrade economic forecasts for 143 countries.
Also Thursday, Russian authorities accused Ukraine of sending two low-flying military helicopters across the border and firing on residential buildings in the village of Klimovo in Russia's Bryansk region, some 7 miles from the frontier. Russia's Investigative Committee said seven people, including a toddler, were wounded.
Russia's state security service had earlier said Ukrainian forces fired mortar rounds at a border post in Bryansk as refugees were crossing, forcing them to flee.
The reports could not be independently verified. Earlier this month, Ukrainian security officials denied that Kyiv was behind an airstrike on an oil depot in the Russian city of Belgorod, some 35 miles from the border.
U.S. LAWMAKERS IN KYIV
In a show of support for Ukraine, Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., traveled Thursday to Kyiv and sites of rights abuses in the city's suburbs, becoming the first U.S. officials to turn up since the start of the war.
"Nothing can substitute for actually being here, seeing it firsthand, spending time with the people and leaders here in Ukraine who have been horribly affected by this war," Daines said in an interview, standing on a heap of rubble from an apartment building that had collapsed on its inhabitants in the town of Borodianka.
It was important, he said, for American elected officials to show solidarity.
Daines and Spartz were invited by the Ukrainian government, with just over a day's notice. Daines had broken off from a visit to Eastern Europe to make the trip. Spartz, who last year became the first Ukrainian-born lawmaker to serve in Congress, had planned an unofficial visit to Ukraine and later joined Daines for the trip supported by the Ukrainian government.
Once in Kyiv, where they arrived by train from western Ukraine, the pair traveled by car escorted by the police on a route through stark scenes of destruction, blown-up Russian tanks and rubble, where rescuers were still searching for bodies. The two also observed an exhumation from a communal grave in Bucha, a town northwest of Kyiv where hundreds of bodies were found on the streets after Russian forces retreated.
The horror in Bucha -- where some victims' hands were bound and some had been shot in the head, in a sign of extrajudicial killings -- has become emblematic of the war's toll and a new touchstone of rights abuse in wartime in Europe. Several European delegations have also visited the site.
The two U.S. lawmakers arrived as the Biden administration is considering sending a high-level official to Kyiv in the days ahead as a sign of support, according to a person familiar with the internal discussions.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have both made high-profile visits over the past month to countries neighboring Ukraine, and other top U.S. officials have made similar visits, some coming close to the border. But no American official had publicly visited Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion in late February, and the United States has evacuated all diplomats.
Daines and Spartz said they were urging the United States to return diplomats to Ukraine as some European states have done now that Kyiv, the capital, is no longer under imminent threat of attack by Russia.
"I hope that our visit will encourage more American officials and leaders to come, to stand with the people of Ukraine," Daines said, while Spartz said it was "important to show our support, to show we care."
Standing in the rubble of the collapsed building, where Ukrainian officials have said that at least 21 people died, Daines found a child's toy, a wooden car, and looked into apartments that had been peeled open by the explosion, revealing kitchen cabinets still hanging on a wall.
In Bucha, the two watched Ukrainian authorities remove three bodies from the tan clay soil of a churchyard where a communal grave was being excavated.
Daines described what he had seen as "indisputable evidence of war crimes."
"It's everywhere," he said. "We've been driving for miles and miles and miles, seeing death and destruction caused by Vladimir Putin in this evil invasion."
Anton Herashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's Interior Ministry, said he had arranged the visit in the hope that more U.S. lawmakers would follow, get a firsthand sense of the stakes in the war and vote to provide additional weapons to Ukraine.
Spartz and Daines said they supported bipartisan efforts in Congress to spur the Biden administration to deliver weapons to the Ukrainian Army more swiftly.
"I think we should be providing the lethal aid that they need to win this war," Daines said. "The humanitarian crisis will not end until the war ends. And the war will not end until the Ukrainians win."
Information for this article was contributed by Adam Shreck and staff members of The Associated Press and by Andrew E. Kramer of The New York Times.
A woman looks as Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) servicemen enter a building during an operation to arrest suspected Russian collaborators in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Thursday, April 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
A cemetery worker takes a rest from working on the graves of civilians killed in Bucha during the war with Russia, in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday April 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
A cemetery worker carries a cross for the tomb of Tetyana Gramushnyak, 75, who was killed by shelling on March 19 while cooking food outside her home in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday April 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
In this image from video provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks from Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 13, 2022. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) servicemen enter a building during an operation to arrest suspected Russian collaborators in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Thursday, April 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
Women wait at a bus station in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, Thursday, April 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
FILE - The Russian missile cruiser Moskva, the flagship of Russia's Black Sea Fleet is seen anchored in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol, on Sept. 11, 2008. The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed the ship was damaged Wednesday, April 13, 2022, but not that it was hit by Ukraine. The Ministry says ammunition on board detonated as a result of a fire whose causes "were being established," and the Moskva's entire crew was evacuated.(AP Photo, File)
A woman looks for goods dropped from the apartment building partly damaged by shelling, in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, Thursday, April 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Andriy Andriyenko)
This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows cruiser Moskva in port Sevastopol in Crimea on April 7, 2022. (Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies via AP)Gallery: Images from Ukraine, month 2
