I posted this before about Russian tanks, and they relate to the Moskva as well I think. Soviet arms tend to be heavily loaded with ordnance at the expense of survivability. Their tanks use autoloaders, which cut number of men inside by one, and they are cramped by western standards. The good part is they can have a smaller profile, and reload quickly, the bad is ammunition is stored in the autoloader in an area less well protected than what we have in the M1A2.
The Moskva was loaded with missiles, on deck, you can see the launchers readily. US ships use vertical launch silos for cruise and other missiles and they are somewhat better protected and isolated. Any mishap on the Moskva would be more prone in turning into a chain reaction where many warheads are in danger. Once that starts, survivability is in doubt. But they carry a lot of missiles. If they were hit by one cruise missile, they might have ejected the rest of their load and contained the damage, if they had time. They seem to have abandoned ship rather quickly, probably because it was already engulfed and bad things happened.
That is a significant loss for their navy, not so much in capability but a lot in imagery. And it means their ships will have to stand further offshore I think if this was a Neptun strike. This might have saved Odessa from attack.
