Fade To Black (Sea)

Ever wonder who you always hear of the great battles the Russian army have fought in history but you never hear anything about the Russian navy?

Perhaps this picture will refresh your attention-span-starved memory.

This is the Moskva, a Russian navel vessel sunk in the Black Sea by the Ukrainians near the coast, near where the Czarist Russian navy bit the big one in the Crimean War against the British, the French and the Turks, and so lost the right to station a fleet in a Black Sea port.  Oh yeah, the Moskva was a Soviet-era ship from the 1970s (she was an old warhorse of a bucket, mate!) that was, ironically, built in a Ukrainian shipyard! 

Awkward. 

After the war, Putin is rumored to be contemplating a new generation of warships for the new Russian navy, to be built with transparent hulls so, when sailing through the Black Sea, the crewmen can see the old Russian navy!

Pozdravlyayu!