New images of the Moskva warship showing the ship billowing smoke before it sank in the Black Sea have emerged online.
The missile cruiser caught on fire after Ukrainian forces claim they hit it with missiles last Thursday and the ship sank in the black sea.
The photos show holes from a potential missile puncture and showed scarring on the left hand side of the port, above the waterline and in the middle of the vessel.
Black smoke was also seen billowing upwards, partially obscuring the front of the ship, CNN reported.
Russia and Ukraine have opposing opinions on how the ship sank.
Moscow denied the ship sank because of Ukrainian missiles and claimed it sank because of a fire onboard.
Last Friday a senior US defence official said he believes two Ukrainian Neptune missiles hit the warship.
Former Director of Operations for the US Pacific Command's Joint Intelligence Centre told CNN, from his assessment the missiles penetrated below the ship's bridge and detonated.
"Assuming the photo is not faked in some way or photo-shopped, it looks like the missile(s) hit forward, which is not unexpected," he said. "Anti-Ship Cruise Missiles (ASCMs) tend to go for the centre of the radar return, which typically is the forward section of the superstructure," he told CNN.
The warship contained missiles, torpedoes, naval guns and other various defence systems.
There are believed to have been around 510 crew members onboard and the Russian military has not released any information about the potential casualties aboard the warship.
The Guardian reported Yulia Tsyvova, whose son Andrei was on the boat, had been searching for information about her son as no one had told her what happened to him.
On Monday morning she received a call from the Russian Defence Ministry who told her her son was dead.
“He was only 19, he was a conscript,” said Tsyvova, who wept as she spoke by telephone. “They didn’t tell me anything else, no information on when the funeral would be."
She reckons he isn't the only one who has died.
