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The ‘ship of shame’. After years of trouble, Russia’s only aircraft carrier may be headed for the scrap heap
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Russia’s only aircraft carrier may soon be headed for the scrapyard. After nearly eight years of stalled repairs, the Admiral Kuznetsov — once a symbol of Moscow’s naval ambition — is reportedly no closer to returning to service. According to a recent report, work on the vessel has been halted, and officials are weighing whether to decommission it altogether. The independent outlet Holod looked into how the Kuznetsov became more burden than pride and what its retirement would mean for the Russian navy. Meduza shares an abridged translation of their reporting.
According to sources cited by the newspaper Izvestia, repairs on the Admiral Kuznetsov — an aircraft carrier long emblematic of both naval ambition and chronic technical trouble — have been halted. Now, the Defense Ministry and the United Shipbuilding Corporation have to decide whether it’s worth trying to finish the job on a nearly 40-year-old vessel. If not, the Kuznetsov will likely be decommissioned and scrapped.
The flagship of the Russian Navy, the Kuznetsov has been in repairs since 2017. But after years of delays, mishaps, and ballooning costs, questions are mounting not only about its technical viability but also about whether aircraft carriers make sense for the Russian fleet at all.
‘Chain-smoking aircraft carrier’
The 300-meter Admiral Kuznetsov is the last in a line of heavy aircraft-carrying cruisers built in the Soviet Union. Laid down in 1982 in Mykolaiv, in what was then the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the ship went through several name changes — including Riga, Leonid Brezhnev, and Tbilisi — before finally being christened in 1990 in honor of Soviet Admiral Nikolai Kuznetsov.
The ship displaces 59,000 tons, can reach speeds of 29 knots (about 54 km/h), and has a maximum range of 8,400 nautical miles. It can operate autonomously for up to 45 days and carries a crew of roughly 2,600, including about 600 aviation personnel. Its air wing consists of 26 fixed-wing aircraft and 24 helicopters.
The Kuznetsov became the pinnacle of the Soviet hybrid carrier concept, designed to combine aviation capabilities with strike weapons. Alongside its air group, the ship was equipped with supersonic Granit missiles designed to target aircraft carrier groups and other major naval vessels. This strike capability allowed the Kuznetsov to be classified as a “heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser” rather than a conventional aircraft carrier — a key legal distinction under the Montreux Convention, which bars aircraft carriers from passing through the Turkish-controlled Bosporus and Dardanelles straits. That classification was especially important, given that the Kuznetsov was homeported in Sevastopol, a city in Crimea on the Black Sea.
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After the Soviet Union collapsed, the ship was transferred to Russia’s Northern Fleet. Since 1991, it’s made seven long-range voyages and received new Su-33 fighter jets. In 2016–2017, it took part in combat operations for the first time, off the coast of Syria. That mission was politically significant for the Kremlin, which sought to demonstrate that Russia, too, had a blue-water navy.
But the carrier’s performance in Syria left much to be desired. Hampered by an unreliable propulsion system, the Kuznetsov had to be accompanied by a tugboat. Two aircraft — a MiG-29K and a Su-33 — were lost during the deployment, not in combat but in accidents at sea, prompting the Russian military to transfer the air wing to a land-based airfield.
The Kuznetsov gained particular notoriety for the thick plumes of black smoke it belched while underway. It even inspired memes dubbing it “the chain-smoking aircraft carrier,” and when it passed near England in early 2017, the then-U.K. defense minister called it a “ship of shame.” The National Interest included it in a list of the world’s worst aircraft carriers.
Following its return from Syria, the ship was sent in for a major overhaul — one that’s still underway. The refit was supposed to be completed by 2022 and include new air defense systems, upgraded electronics, and a modernized flight deck. But those plans quickly unraveled. In 2018, the PD-50 floating dry dock where the ship was undergoing repairs sank, and a crane collapsed onto the deck, punching a hole in it. A year later, a fire during welding work killed two people. Another fire broke out in 2022. As a result, dry-dock work on the ship’s underwater hull only wrapped up in 2023.
Accidents during repairs
These repeated setbacks drove the estimated cost of repairs from 20 billion rubles ($256.4 million) in 2017 to 60 billion rubles ($769.2 million) the following year. The timeline stretched again and again — from an initial completion date of 2022 to revised deadlines in 2023 and then 2024. As of now, there’s still no firm plan for returning the vessel to service. And officials have stopped disclosing how much the project is expected to cost.
A relic facing its reckoning
It’s still unclear what’s next for the Admiral Kuznetsov. Russia’s Defense Ministry hasn’t officially commented on Izvestia’s report that repairs have been halted, and experts remain divided over whether the vessel should be restored at all.
Former Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Sergey Avakyants believes that continuing the Kuznetsov’s overhaul would be a waste of resources. “Aircraft carriers are a thing of the past — massive and costly structures that can be destroyed within minutes by modern weapons,” he told Izvestia.
In Avakyants’s view, the focus should instead be on unmanned aircraft and robotic systems. If the Kuznetsov is decommissioned, he says, the only sensible step would be to scrap it for parts.
But others argue that aircraft carriers still have a role to play. Ilya Kramnik, an analyst at Russia’s Institute of World Economy and International Relations, believes that that distant naval operations still require air cover. “A modern navy cannot function without air support. Ships need their own airfield, especially when operating far from shore,” he said.
According to Kramnik, officials are indeed weighing the impracticality of further repairs, and turning the vessel into a museum would be prohibitively expensive. Nor is it likely anyone would buy such an outdated ship. In his view, the most realistic outcome is to scrap the Kuznetsov and use the experience gained from its design and deployment to build a new warship.
Depending on size and equipment, constructing a modern aircraft carrier from scratch today costs anywhere from $2 billion to $13 billion. India’s INS Vikrant reportedly cost nearly $3.1 billion, the U.K.’s HMS Queen Elizabeth about $4 billion, and the U.S. Navy’s USS Gerald R. Ford over $13 billion.
Such an undertaking would require spending on par with the annual budgets of entire Russian regions. Decommissioning the Kuznetsov would deliver both a symbolic and practical blow to Russia’s ability to project power at sea — already diminished by endless repairs and successful Ukrainian strikes on the Russian Navy.
The Admiral Kuznetsov became a symbol of its era. It went from a source of national pride to a major headache for shipbuilders. Still, it holds a unique place in the fleet’s history: a bold experiment that never quite lived up to its ambitions.
Yet the Kuznetsov’s troubled journey may finally be nearing its end. In the coming months, Russian officials must make a final decision: either decommission the vessel and close a chapter of military history, or grant it one last chance. If the cruiser is scrapped, Russia will be left without a single aircraft carrier — and with even fewer options for launching offensive operations in distant maritime theaters.
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