Anger is mounting from parents of conscripts feared dead on the Russian Moskva amid claims that the sunken warship’s captain abandoned ship to save his own life.
One desperate mum believes crew members might still be alive on the sea bottom in sealed compartments of the missile-damaged cruiser, but that nobody cares.
Olesya Dubinina, from naval port Sevastopol, said: “We urgently need to start a rescue operation.
The mum, whose 20-year-old son is missing, added: "For sure, when it sank there were still living people, wounded, unconscious.
"For sure, there are battened down parts of the ship that have not been flooded."
Her demands for a rescue mission have fallen on deaf ears, and the chances of anyone being alive must be negligible but the tragic parents are frantic after they were sent to sea to fight in Putin's war.
A rising number of distraught parents are expressing outrage over being given wholly misleading information on the fate of their conscript sons.
Two people revealed they were told their son was “alive" then “missing” and finally that he had “died”.
One said: “What’s going on? Why are we being bullied like this?"
It comes amid suggestions that Russia staged a huge cover-up on the sinking of the Moskva, hit by two Ukrainian Neptune missiles, then compounded it by showing heavily manipulated footage of a supposed parade of the “rescued” sailors.
British experts cited by the Daily Telegraph suggested that First Rank Captain Anton Kuprin, 44, reported as dead by the Ukrainians, in fact survived after abandoning his ship while others struggled for life on board.
He was reportedly filmed at the weekend after his escape, although footage from the Russian Defence Ministry cannot be verified.
His evident return to his loving family has infuriated parents of low-ranked sailors who cannot even get information on whether their conscript sons, who by law should not have been sent to war, are alive or maimed or, missing presumed dead or known to be dead.
There is special outrage at the deputy commander of the division responsible for the ship, Capt. Alexey Bugorsky.
The mother of conscript Igor Kutnyak received a message from him saying her son was “safe and sound”.
Another relative was then “told he is dead. And now they called and said that he was missing, as if mocking us.
“His brother was told that he had died, and when he asked about the funeral, they said that nothing is clear.
“Now he called and was told that [Kutnyak] was missing. I cannot understand anything now."
The cases have been highlighted by Dmitry Shkrebets, whose 20-year-old conscript son Yegor Shkrebets, a ship’s cook on the Moskva, is now missing, presumed dead.
Mr Shkrebets has vowed to expose the truth about the sailors on the Moskva after accusing the authorities of “blatant and cynical lies”.
He believes there are around 200 wounded - some with their limbs blown off.
Two mothers told BBC Russia that their sons Andrey Tsyvov, 19, and Nikita Syromyasov, 20, are missing after being on board the Moskva.
Andrey’s mother Yulia Tsyvova said she cannot get a straight answer.
“They seem to be saying something, that he is not in the hospital, he is not there ,” she said.
“Wherever I called - numbers I found on the Internet… no-one can say anything - they shrug,” she said.
Syromyasov’s mother Olesya Dubinina, from Crimea, who had claimed some men may still be alive in the wreck, said she has been told he is “missing” from the sunken flagship of the Black Sea Fleet.
Initially Russia had said that the entire crew was safely evacuated.
But she said: “I called them, and they answered: ‘He is missing.’ And what do I do? Well, wait."
"What should I expect?" I'll tell you right away, but the chances of a positive outcome are almost zero.
"In terms of? The temperature of the water is incompatible with life…. Well, you said that the entire crew was evacuated? I only have lists [of survivors], I only say this."
Ms Dubinina admitted to exploding with rage but tried to contact other naval officials.
She was told: "Your son is on the missing list. Wait, and the command will contact you."
She last spoke to him more than a month ago when he called and said: “Mum, it's me. Mum, we were forbidden to say anything. I can't even tell where I am right now.
"Phones were taken away, everyone was forbidden to say anything.”
She asked one commander: “Tell me, please, if you went in the direction of Ukraine, why didn’t you remove the conscripts from the ship?"
They answered: “We were in neutral waters! We did not take part in hostilities.”
She believed there were many conscripts on the vessel.
Two sailors now confirmed as dead are Vitaly Begersky, who was keeping watch on the starboard side of the Moskva, and midshipman Ivan Vakhrushev.
His wife Varvara Vakhrusheva said he had died while "carrying out his duties”.
“His body was found. I was told on Thursday," she said and had been told that 27 crew members went missing.
Russian historian Oleg Baraev has questioned footage showing the Moskva crew “survivors” at a Sevastopol parade ground that was issued by the Defence Ministry to show that many were still alive.
He said the cruiser had at least 66 officers and 64 midshipmen on board, but analysis of the uniforms did not show them to be visible.
“Since this was the flagship there might be even more high-ranked officers,” he posted on Facebook.
On the footage “there are no officers visible” except for a scene where the head of the Navy, Admiral Nikolay Yevmenov, shakes hands with a second rank captain, he said.
“But the Moskva crew did not have a single second rank captain [on its crew].
“The captain was a first rank captain and his deputies were either third rank captains, or Lieutenant-Commanders.”
In fact, a man resembling the ship’s captain Anton Kuprin was seen on the footage.
This indicated that Ukrainian claims that he had died were false.
However, other sources have questioned whether some of the footage was old, from before the sinking of the Moskva.
