Admiral Kuznetsov
Russia's sole aircraft carrier — a heavy, conventionally powered STOBAR ship designed in the 1980s, now crippled by repeated accidents and likely headed for the scrapyard.
Russia’s only aircraft carrier — a Soviet-built STOBAR cruiser that has spent more years laid up and burning than at sea, and now faces probable scrapping after a chain of refit disasters.
Overview
The Admiral Kuznetsov (Project 1143.5) is a heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser of the Russian Navy, commissioned in 1991 as the Soviet Union dissolved. Designed with a ski-jump bow and arrested-recovery wires — a STOBAR configuration — it carries Su-33 and MiG-29K tactical fighters along with Ka-27/Ka-31 helicopters. Unusually for a carrier, the ship embeds a heavy anti-ship missile battery of twelve P-700 Granit (SS-N-19) launchers. After a single combat-credible Mediterranean deployment in 2016-17, it has been immobilized by a sinking dry dock, a crane collapse, and multiple onboard fires. A 2025 19FortyFive assessment described the ship as almost certainly never returning to service and the Russian Navy as “quietly mothballing” it, making scrapping the most realistic outcome.19FortyFive
Development
Ordered as the second hull of a new class of Soviet heavy aircraft-carrying cruisers, Admiral Kuznetsov was laid down at the Nikolayev South Shipyard (on the Black Sea, in what is now Ukraine) and commissioned in 1991. As the Soviet Navy collapsed, the ship became the Russian Navy’s sole carrier, while its incomplete sister ship Varyag was eventually sold to China and refitted as the Liaoning. The design reflected the Soviet “rocket-carrier” concept: a flight deck for fighters and helicopters, but also an integrated battery of long-range anti-ship cruise missiles that would allow the ship to operate independently in contested waters without the support of a full battle group. The refit that was supposed to restore the ship to active service began in 2017, but misfortunes soon piled up, leading to the current non-operational status.19FortyFive
🔒 The rest of the Admiral Kuznetsov file is for BattlePolicy Pro members. Stop here and you miss the part that actually matters: how it performs and where it falls short, its combat record, how it stacks up head-to-head against its real counterparts, the complete specifications table, and our analysts’ procurement, supplier and assessment notes. Unlock the full file with BattlePolicy Pro →