This aircraft carrier was stolen from Ukraine and then ruined by the Russian Navy. But how Russia
managed to use up most of the carrier's service life without the ship even leaving the dock,
is not what you think.
During her design phase, the newest Soviet heavy aircraft carrier was called
“Soviet Union”. In 1982, when she was laid down in Soviet Ukraine,
she was named “Riga”. Then when launched in 1985, she was renamed to “Leonid Brezhnev”,
and when she underwent sea trials in 1989, she was known as “Tbilisi”.
When Tbilisi was about to enter service, the Soviet Navy was not ready to run such a ship.
There were no airgroups, no task forces of which Tbilisi would be,
and no air traffic control groups, without which Tbilisi couldn’t function. But worst of all, there
was no infrastructure to support such a ship, and spoiler alert, such an infrastructure still
doesn’t exist. Even the carrier’s first commanding officer, Captain Viktor Yarygin, told a Soviet
newspaper that the Soviet Navy was not prepared for the appearance of a ship like Tbilisi.
You see, during the Soviet times, most funding was allocated to ship development and manufacturing,
and not enough money was left over for routine upkeep of the existing ships.
As the Soviet Union was enduring its final days, the Soviet Navy didn’t want their
capital ships to be named after cities that had open opposition to the Soviet Union. They
wanted Tbilisi and her sister ship Riga renamed. The government caved in, and on September 19th,
1990, it was announced that Tbilisi was renamed to “Admiral of the Fleet of The Soviet Union
Kuznetsov '' and the under-construction sister ship was renamed to “Varyag”. And this was kind
of a big deal, especially if you are already familiar with the marine superstition list
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Admiral Kuznetsov is truly a misfortunate ship whose adventures began when Russia
secretly plotted to steal her from the newly independent Ukraine.
The carrier’s misfortunes started with the downfall of the Soviet Union. On August 24th,
1991, Ukraine declared independence from the USSR. Immediately, tensions with Russia began on what to
do with the Black Sea fleet, since the majority of officers were pro-Russia. The Ukrainian president,
Leonid Kravchuk, proclaimed that Admiral Kuznetsov is Ukrainian property and ordered the commander
of the ship to remain docked in Ukraine. But the commander, Viktor Yarygin, disagreed. In his eyes,
Ukraine did not exist as a country, yet. Because the independence referendum was not held yet. So
on December 1st, 1991, the very same day that 92% of Ukrainians were busy voting for Independence
during the referendum, aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov left the Black Sea under orders from the
Russian Northern Fleet and headed to Murmansk. One third of the ship's crew remained on the carrier,
with the rest staying behind in Ukraine. With construction still incomplete,
Admiral Kuznetsov traveled thousands of kilometers away from the shipbuilder,
and ended up in a port that lacked proper infrastructure to house such a capital ship.
Despite being unfinished, on January 20th, 1991 Kuznetsov was commissioned
as the flagship of the Russian Navy, but it didn’t receive any aircraft
for two years later, and wasn’t even fully operational for another 3 years.
The carrier’s first deployment began in 1995 in the Mediterranean sea which lasted three months.
Her mission was to show off Russia’s new flagship and practice sorties during
favorable Mediterranean weather conditions. The carrier's main role was “status projection”
rather than “power projection” as Admiral Kuznetsov was retained and sustained for
Russia's appearance of being a major naval power. After all, an aircraft carrier with
fixed wing aircraft is a type of capital ship that very few countries possess.
But Kuznetsov is more of a Potemkin Village, which if you're unfamiliar with, is a construction whose
purpose is to provide an external façade to a country that is doing poorly, to make it
look like they are doing better than they really are. Kind of like instagram, but for countries!
This carrier is not the front piece of a modern fleet. Rather behind Kuznetsov,
is a Russian Navy trying desperately to maintain the resemblance of the once large,
impressive and far-ranging Soviet Navy.
While on the outside, the Kuznetsov might look mighty, during its first deployment, 2,000
embarked men were rationing water, which was only available for 20 minutes a day. 10 minutes in the
morning and 10 minutes in the evening, because the ship's evaporators which distill sea water broke
down. At one point, the US Navy was poised to help the Russian Flagship by providing fresh water.
But it gets worse. Admiral Kuznetsov’s propulsion system consists of 8
pressurized boilers which are extremely unreliable. As a result, on multiple occasions,
including her first deployment, the carrier lost all propulsion and was dead at sea.
Even though the propulsion system could frequently be repaired at sea, on occasion,
Kuznetsov had to be towed back to port. For this reason, during the 2016 Syrian campaign,
the flagship of the Russian Navy had to be accompanied by a tugboat, Nikolay Chicker, which
in hindsight was a good idea, because yet again, Kuznetsov lost propulsion, and with the help of
this mighty tugboat, she was towed back to port during a not so fair weather. Potemkin Village!
According to western sources, Russia ended up procuring more carrier-based airplanes than
it managed to train qualified pilots. Which is kind of ironic, as the opposite charade happened
during the first deployment of the Soviet aircraft carrier, Kiev, in the 1970s. By the time the first
Soviet aircraft carrier was ready for its first deployment, only six Yak-38 aircraft had been
produced and embarked on the ship. So in order to make Kiev look more mighty than she really was
in front of American Intelligence services, Soviets engaged in an elaborate deception.
Sailors repainted the airframe numbers on the aircraft after each sortie,
in order to inflate the number of yak-38 aircraft that was supposedly stored inside the carrier's
hangars. And you gotta give it to them, because their deception worked. American media reported
that the Kiev aircraft carrier had embarked at least 60 aircraft, while in reality it was just 6.
We should clarify that Kuznetsov is not an aircraft carrier, at least legally speaking,
she does not identify as an aircraft carrier, otherwise she’d be stuck in the Black Sea. That’s
because according to the Montreux Convention, the passage of aircraft carriers heavier than 15,000
tones are prohibited through the Turkish Straits. The easy workaround was for the Soviets to
designate Kuznetsov and all their other aircraft carriers, as heavy aircraft-carrying cruisers.
During three decades of service in the Russian Navy, Kuznetsov only made
six short deployments to the Mediterranean and Atlantic.
She spent most of her service time docked in Murmansk or in shipyards for repairs. Her average
seagoing time was around 15 days per year and she only saw one combat deployment in Syria in 2016 .
Arguably, the most memorable event from the Syrian deployment was the black smoke. The
black exhaust was attributed to many different causes such as the use of low quality fuel,
operator error for not preheating fuel and so on.
But it is becoming evident that the likely cause was simply the carrier’s worn out power plant.
But how could this be? During her 30-year career, Kuznetsov has only spent 450 days at sea in total.
That’s nowhere near enough time to wear out a carrier’s power plant.
There are reports emerging that four of her eight KVG-4 boilers need to be replaced
during midlife refit as they are worn out. You see, the Soviet Union only bothered to
create these gigantic machines, and not their permanent bases. Instead of getting shore-based
electricity and hot water when Kuznetsov was docked, her boilers were thrashed prematurely,
wearing out the power plants. As she sat quietly for most of her life on the pier side, the useful
life of her machinery was spent providing electricity and water to the crew onboard.
In contrast, when Nimitz-class carriers are docked in their permanent ports,
full shore services are provided to supply electricity, water and so on. The nuclear
reactors would then be shut down. If services are not available, the reactor that has used
up the most fuel would be shut down, while the other one provides power to the ship.
But the wearing out of the propulsion system and other machinery is not the
only issue. Pretty much everything else on the carrier has a tough time holding up
due to her age. Particularly the arresting gear.
In 2016 during the deployment in Syria, two combat aircraft crashed when attempting to land.
An Su-33 broke the arresting cable and rolled off the deck. The pilot ejected and survived.
A few days later, three aircraft took off, but only two were able to land on the ship.
That’s because two of the carrier's four arresting wires snapped after the second landing.
The pilot of the third airplane was ordered to circle the carrier and wait until the crew fixed
the arresting gear. One hour later, the MIG-29K ran out of fuel and the pilot had to eject!
In 2017, the carrier returned back to Murmansk to undergo mid-life refit, which would extend
her service life by another 25 years. As part of the refit, the Russian flagship had to spend some
time in drydock, and the only available one in northern Russia was the PD-50 floating drydock.
But on October 30th, 2018, the floating dock lost its supply of electricity from shore.
As the pumps stopped pumping out water out of the ballast tanks,
the dock slowly leaned and sank. As a result, one of the two 70-ton cranes
ended up falling on the carrier, leaving a 13 by 15-foot hole in the flight deck.
The sinking of PD-50 could have been prevented, if only the floating dock had emergency generators,
which it did! But how good is a generator that has no diesel in the fuel tank. It later turned out
that no diesel fuel had ever been purchased for these generators, which is not surprising at all,
because the general director of the shipyard that was contracted to repair Kuznetsov was later
arrested and charged for stealing $650,000 from the money that was allocated to the repair work.
After the sinking of the PD-50 floating dock, it was announced that two adjacent
650-ft long dry docks in Murmansk shipyard would be combined into one massive 1300-ft dock.
Thirty years after commissioning, Russia is finally putting proper support in place for
its one and only aircraft carrier. In a way, the past misfortunes of Admiral Kuznetsov,
can be attributed to the Russian Government's failure to invest in proper infrastructure.
Because not having an aircraft carrier is not an option for Russia. But the real question is,
once Kuznetsov completes her mid-life refit and comes out of dry dock,
would the mighty tug boat still be there for her, or not!