KYIV: Ukraine said Friday that Russia will seek revenge after the sinking of its flagship missile cruiser, the Moskva, which Kyiv claimed to have hit with Neptune missiles.

"The Moskva cruiser strike hit not only the ship itself: it hit the enemy's imperial ambitions. We are all aware that we will not be forgiven for this," Natalia Gumeniuk, a spokeswoman for Ukraine's southern military forces said during a briefing.

"We are aware that attacks against us will intensify and that the enemy will take revenge. We understand this," she added, citing ongoing strikes on cities in the south of Ukraine, Odessa and Mykolaiv.

The Moskva had been leading Russia's naval effort in the seven-week invasion and the circumstances around its sinking and the fate of its crew remain murky.

"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," she added.

A factory outside Kyiv that produced the missiles allegedly used to hit Russia's Moskva warship was partly destroyed by overnight Russian strikes, just ahead of Gumeniuk's briefing.