Admiral Kuznetsov

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. In July 2025 the head of United Shipbuilding Corporation said there was no point in repairing the ship and that it would be sold or disposed of, making scrapping the most realistic outcome, as reported by Newsweek.

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