Key Points and Summary – The Admiral Kuznetsov, Russia’s only aircraft carrier, is likely headed for the scrapyard after a disastrous career plagued by accidents and endless, costly overhauls.
A top official has confirmed “there is no point repairing it anymore.” The cursed ship has been out of service since 2017, suffering a fire, having a crane collapse on its deck, and even losing its crew, who were sent to fight in Ukraine as infantry.
Its demise marks a major blow to Russia’s naval prestige and symbolizes the grim, withered future of its surface fleet.
How Russia’s Only Aircraft Carrier Became a Floating Disaster.
WARSAW, POLAND – In the USSR’s last decade of existence, the Soviet Naval Fleet (VMF) began building three aircraft carriers: the Admiral Kuznetsov, the Varyag, and the Ulyanovsk. Of the three, only the Kuznetsov was ever completed and put to sea.
The Varyag was only partially completed and eventually sold to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It spent years in the Dalian shipyards being refitted and equipped with an entirely new propulsion system before being christened the CV 16 Liaoning. It has since operated as the lead carrier in the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).
The Ulyanovsk, named after the city, which is also the birthplace of the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Ilych Lenin, was supposed to have been a “supercarrier” and much larger than the other two. It was not far enough along in the build process to be sellable for anything other than its scrap value.
Ironically, the Kuznetsov may now be sharing the same fate as this super-sized carrier that never was. The news this past week is that the ship is likely to be sold to any buyer that would have it or scrapped outright. (Previously, older helicopter or VSTOL carriers in the VMF have been sold off to the PRC to be used as floating entertainment complexes.)
Admiral Kuznetsov: End of Russian Carrier Aviation
Withdrawing the Admiral Kuznetsov from service would mark the end of conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) aircraft carrier aviation. The 1,000-foot-long Kuznetsov had always been promoted as the first of several carriers, with the VMF’s “official” plan in the early 2000s to have as many as six such ships of its class in the fleet.
Not having a single such carrier in the fleet not only symbolizes the end of these lofty ambitions but also is likely the end of any future plans for carrier-capable fighter aircraft. When the Kuznetsov was still in its shipyard berth and preparing for sea trials, the Mikoyan MIG-29K and Sukhoi Su-27K prototypes were both being tested for carrier operations
at the NITKA facility at the Novofedorovka aerodrome near the city of Saki in Crimea.
Today, there has been little to no discussion about creating a new generation of naval aviation fighters—such as a carrier-capable version of the Su-57.
“This is for the simple reason that there is no practical application in the future for a carrier-capable fighter,” said an engineer who had worked on the MiG-29K prototype project. “Not only is the Russian Navy today a shadow of the Soviet-era fleet, but there is really no way to build any new carriers themselves.”
“The only shipyard in all the former USSR capable of being used to build vessels of this size are the Nikolayev shipyards, which are in Ukraine,” he continued. “And I do not have to tell you that the chances of the Ukrainians ever cooperating with Russia in building naval vessels—or anything else for that matter—is never going to happen, at least not in my lifetime.”
The Repairs That Never Finished
What to do with the Admiral Kuznetsov, a 40-year-old vessel but also the flagship of the Russian Navy, is a question that has been up in the air for some time now.
The ship has required many repairs over the years. It has been out of service since 2017, and a refit of the vessel was to have been completed in 2022.
But the repairs never finished, and maintenance on the ship was eventually suspended altogether. In 2018, the floating dry dock in which the ship was berthed at the northern port of Murmansk sank and is unrecoverable. A fire that later broke out aboard caused what was described as “near-unrepairable damage.”
Andrei Kostin, the chairman of Russia’s United Shipbuilding Corporation
(USC), told the Russian business daily Kommersant recently that due to the many problems remaining with the vessel, “there is no point to repairing it anymore. It is over 40 years old, and it is extremely expensive [to maintain].”
Funding is also an issue. The combined price tag of bringing the ship back to where it is fit for sea duty and the aircraft and pilots who would be serving on board is an operational status. “The opportunity cost for other parts of the Russian war effort is hard to justify,” said the same engineer who had worked on the MiG-29K program.
If this were not enough, there may not actually be any trained, skilled crew left alive who know how to service the carrier and operate it at sea. In 2024, the ship’s crew was cannibalized and turned into an infantry unit. Those sailors-turned-infantry were then sent to the fighting near Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region, which has been some of the fiercest of the war to date.
What Happens Next?
Junking the Admiral Kuznetsov will be another blow to the declining status of the Russian Navy. The combination of this development, plus the Black Sea Fleet having lost so many of its ships due to the overwhelming number of Ukrainian drones attacking the fleet, has significantly diminished the VMF’s status as a great-power navy.
Yörük Işık, the head of the Bosphorus Observer consultancy in Istanbul, told Newsweek on Monday that mothballing or cutting up the ship for scrap will be “a loss of prestige” for the VMF.
That sense of loss, however, is seen as primarily psychological, as the carrier being out of action all these years has had little to no impact on the VMF’s strategic effectiveness.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
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