Russia May Scrap its First and Only Aircraft Carrier

The head of United Shipbuilding believes that Russia's only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, will be decommissioned - a fate that Western analysts have long expected for the Soviet-era hulk.

The Kuznetsov was built in USSR-era Ukraine at the Black Sea Shipyard, and she entered commissioned service in 1991, just as the Soviet Union collapsed. Shortly after her commissioning, the newly-independent Ukrainian government sent the commanding officer a letter of demand, claiming the ship as Ukrainian property and ordering that she be held in Sevastopol; the Russian Navy quickly ordered her departure and moved her out of reach.

Kuznetsov is part of Russia's Northern Fleet, and has spent most of her service life in and around Murmansk. She made half a dozen training deployments to the Mediterranean over the decades, supported by Russia's leased base in Tartus, Syria.

The carrier made a single combat deployment to the Eastern Mediterranean during the Battle of Aleppo in 2016, and she launched 400 sorties in support of dictator Bashar al-Assad's troops during a weeks-long fight. The Syrian campaign presented Russia's first opportunity to test out naval flight operations in combat conditions, with limited success; Kuznetsov lost two fighters due to failures of the ship's arresting gear during the campaign.

In 2017, after returning from the Syrian mission, Kuznetsov entered a shipyard period to replace her boilers and modernize her systems - and she never emerged. A long string of setbacks kept slowing down the project: in 2018, the floating drydock that supported the carrier sank out from beneath her. The dock's sinking left Russia without a facility large enough to drydock the carrier, so a pair of graving docks in Murmansk were combined and enlarged to create enough room to hold her. In 2019, while awaiting completion of the new graving dock, the ship suffered a major fire, which killed two and caused significant damage.

In May 2022, four years after the floating drydock sank, Kuznetsov finally entered the enlarged graving dock. But by that point, Russia had begun its invasion of Ukraine, cutting off its supply chain for Soviet-compatible marine engines and spares - a niche that Ukrainian factories had filled for Russia's navy since the communist era.

Another fire in December 2022 set back the Kuznetsov's revival further, followed by crewing issues. Kuznetsov's crew was rumored disbanded in 2023, and officials publicly discussed a need to recruit replacements to fill out a 1,500-person roster. By late 2024, public records showed that many of Kuznetsov's crewmembers were reassigned to the front lines with the 1st Guards Tank Army, according to open source analyst David Axe. This prompted predictions from Western commentators that Kuznetzov - now approaching her fourth decade and increasingly obsolete - would be decommissioned.

On Friday, the head of top Russian defense shipbuilder United Shipbuilding Corp. (USC) told state news outlet Kommersant that Kuznetov will likely be disposed of by sale or demolition. "We believe there is no point in repairing it anymore. It is over 40-years old, and it is extremely expensive," Andrei Kostin, head of shipyard owner VTB Bank, told Kommersant.

His comments followed earlier reports in Russian media that the project was under review. "The future belongs to carriers of robotic systems and unmanned aircraft," former Russian Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Sergei Avakyants told Izvestia in early July. "Carriers] can be destroyed in a few minutes with modern weapons."

Admiral Kuznetsov's sister ship, Varyag, was never completed at the Black Sea Shipyard; she was sold to Chinese interests as a hulk. Varyag was towed to Dalian and fitted out, and lives on in service today with the PLA Navy as the Liaoning.