Black Sea Missile Battle?

Found a great naval blog, http://informationdissemination.blogspot.com/. They're passing on a story from the Ukrainian press about the details of the naval battle reported some days ago, when a Georgian missile boat was reported sunk. Here's the account:

We took up station guarding the opposed landing on the Abkhaz shore when all of a sudden four high speed targets were detected. We sent out an IFF signal and the targets didn't react. Receiving a command from the flagship, we got into formation and right at that moment the unidentified targets opened fire on the ship formation and flagship. The cruiser was damaged and a small fire broke out aboard. Then, fearing for seaworthyness, the flagship withdrew from the firing area." - the sailor said.

"Right then the small missile boats clearly fired," the participant continued. "Taking up position, our MRK launched a "Malakhit" (SS-N-9) anti-surface missile, which literally cut the lead ship, the "Tbilisi" to ribbons. After that, fire was shifted to the rest of the Georgian ships. Another ship was damaged, we couldn't finish it off, allowing it to leave the scene under its own power.

Three interesting items of note there. First of all, that could not have been the Tblisi, and I can prove it. Here she is, burning at port:




And here she is on her better days:


Georgia has no other boats of that class, so it's definitely her. So, the unfortunate implication is that the boat this sailor believes he sunk was actually Georgia's only other (and much more powerful) missile boat, the Dioskuria. Damn. (Or, there were no Georgian missile boats there at all.)

Item two: Apparently the mighty Moskva was hit in this fight and had to withdraw. Did the infamous Exocet strike again? Or were the Russian ships just incapable of keeping the Georgian gunboats at a safe distance and got shelled? In any case, the Slava-class design "is said to be marred by large quantities of flammable material and poor damage-control capabilities," so a small amount of damage might take it out of the fight. I'd hate to be on board if those Sandboxes started cooking off...



Thirdly, as far as I'm aware, this is the first time the SS-N-9 Siren was used in combat. If only one was fired, then it's 1/1.... but I suspect they fired several and mostly missed. They might have been too close for it to be as effective as it could have been.

EDIT:
I just wanted to follow up on this post since I recently installed SiteMeter and noticed this article is still getting hits. The best evidence now suggests the ship sunk in the skirmish was a gunboat; not either of the missile boats Tblisi or Dioskiria. The Dio was towed out to sea from Poti and scuttled.

More here.