Russia could scrap last aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov because Putin can’t afford it

The Russian military is eyeing plans to scrap its last remaining aircraft carrier, which has been plagued for years with disasters and costly repairs, according to state media.

The Russian navy and the United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) are in talks on whether it’s worth restoring the damaged Admiral Kuznestov, a rusted Cold War-era hulk whose repairs would cost more than $250 million — a significant price tag for President Vladimir Putin to pay while still running his meatgrinder war in Ukraine.

“This is a very expensive and inefficient naval weapon,” Admiral Sergei Avakyants, ex-commander of the Pacific Fleet, told the state-owned Izvestia newspaper.

“If the Admiral Kuznetsov is decided not to continue repairs, it remains only to take it, cut it into scrap metal and dispose of it,” he added.

The aircraft carrier first took to the seas in 1985 as a symbol of the Soviet Union’s naval might, with the Kuznetsov set to be the first of a two-ship carrier fleet that never was.

The USSR dissolved just six years later.

The 1,000-foot-long ship can carry 26 fighter jets, the Sukhoi Su-33 Flanker-D, along with 24 helicopters. It has been deployed seven times around the eastern hemisphere to complete missions for the Kremlin.

The ship has been out of service since 2017 after the Kuznetsov sustained damages when it lost two aircraft in a botched landing off Syria, where Russia had been backing now-ousted President Bashar al-Assad.

The setback caused the ship to undergo repairs at a shipyard in the Murmansk region, where a crane collapsed onto the deck of the ship when a floating dock sank in October 2018.

The following year, a major fire killed two people on board and injured more than a dozen others, according to Russian media. USC CEO Alexey Rakhmanov warned that it would take nearly $5 million to repair the ship after the blaze.

By 2021, the general director of the shipyard overseeing the Kuznetsov was arrested and charged with embezzling more than half-a-million dollars allocated to the ship’s repairs.

Moscow had originally hoped to return the Kuznetsov to service by 2022, but the date kept being pushed back further and further, with the budget to repair the ship ballooning to $257 million.

The latest estimate claimed that the repairs would allow the ship to carry on for another 20 years, but many in Moscow believe that would be a waste of resources.

“Aircraft carriers are a relic of a bygone era,” Avakyants said. “They’re expensive and ineffective. The future lies in robotic systems and unmanned aviation.

Ilya Kramnik, of Moscow’s IMEMO RAS Center for Strategic Planning Studies, echoed the calls to retire the Kuznetsov and have the Kremlin instead focus on building a new generation of aircraft carriers.

“Even if it (the Kuznetsov) lasts until 2040, it won’t last long. Therefore, taking into account the experience gained during the operation of the Admiral Kuznetsov, it is necessary to build another ship.” Kramnik told the state outlet.

Kramnik suggested that there would be no hope to save the Kuznetsov as a museum piece or a relic of the Soviet era, joining calls for the ship to be scrapped and to have its name stripped and transferred to a new ship.