Hundreds of Russian Naval crew members were killed when the warship Moskva sank in the Black Sea Thursday, according to a new report by the Telegraph.

While Russia claims that all 510 crew members of the missile carrier flagship of the fleet were evacuated before it sank, reports from the region indicate that only "a few dozen" sailors were recovered.

"The leadership of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation have deliberately hidden the truth from relatives and friends of the crew members," Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to the Kyiv Interior Ministry said Friday. "All the crew of the cruiser Moskva died."

The ship is believed to have been hit by two Ukrainian Neptune missiles, and sunk shortly after while being towed to port, U.S. military officials told the New York Times. 

Russia, on the other hand, said a fire broke out accidentally on the ship and that the crew was able to evacuate before it sank.

In addition to any crew, the sinking also took its arsenal of missiles to the bottom of the sea, issuing a huge blow to Russian naval superiority in the region.

"They thought they could run around the Black Sea and go anywhere they wanted," retired Adm. James G. Foggo III, the dean of the Center for Maritime Strategy at the Navy League of the United States told the Times. "They found out otherwise."

Ukrainian officials said, "the explosion was so strong that the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet sank in a matter of minutes," and that choppy seas made rescue efforts "impossible.

"We saw that other ships tried to assist it, but even the forces of nature were on Ukraine's side because the storm made both the rescue operation and crew evacuations impossible," the Telegraph reported that Natalia Gumeniuk, a spokeswoman for Ukraine's southern military forces said during a briefing on Friday.

According to the report, the fact that the Russians have not shown crew members returning home from the ship, and a reported vigil held in a central square of Sevastopol in Crimea including a funeral wreath dedicated to the crew of the Moskva, is fueling speculation that most of the crew died.

Lithuanian Defense Minister Arvydas Anusauskas told the Telegraph that 54 people were evacuated to a Turkish vessel after the Moskva sent out a distress call early Thursday, but little else is known about the rest of the ship’s compliment.

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