By Galina Korol | 2024-12-02

KYIV -- The allegedly cutting-edge Russian missile cruiser Admiral Nakhimov has yet again failed to sail, despite almost 30 years of repairs and $2 billion invested, according to news reports.

It was scheduled to go to sea November 15, but the ship, idled since 1997 for repairs, will languish some more at a dock in Severodvinsk.

"The launch of the cruiser into open water has now been postponed indefinitely," Vesti.ru reported.

The Kremlin and Russian propaganda outlets have not cited official reasons for the delay, Defense Express, a Ukrainian outlet, pointed out.

Instead, several potential "legitimate" reasons have been mentioned.

For example, one of the stated reasons for the holdup could be the formation of ice in the White Sea, where the crew should have taken the Admiral Nakhimov for trials.

Another rationale is that sending an "unprepared" ship to sea would be rash, particularly because Moscow has its hands full with the war in Ukraine. As such, the Russian defense-industrial complex has "higher priority" shipbuilding tasks, Defense Express reported November 15.

The complex process of modernization doomed the hoped-for testing, observers of the Russian military say.

"Admiral Nakhimov is a fairly large ship. For this, of course, [officials] attracted a huge number of suppliers of combat systems and weapons," Newsweek on November 15 quoted military analyst Dmitry Boltenkov as saying.

"But now our country is undergoing import substitution in full swing. Therefore, perhaps they planned to buy some auxiliary systems in the West, but now they need to be created themselves," he said.

Siphoning off resources

On paper the Admiral Nakhimov was supposed to transport Onyx, Kalibr and Zircon missiles and be the most powerful ship in Russia's North Sea Fleet, but it turned into an eternal modernization venture.

"[The Russians] make good polystyrene mock-ups, they look nice, but things don't go further than that because for everything else they need technologies they lack," Pavlo Lakiychuk, a program director at Ukraine's Strategy XXI Center for Global Studies, told Kontur.

The saga of modernizing the Admiral Nakhimov has been going on for decades.

The navy idled the ship for repairs in 1997, back when Boris Yeltsin was president. It has not sailed since.

Since 2013, the designated contractor has been Sevmash.

"According to the original agreement between Sevmash and the Russian Ministry of Defense, the cruiser was supposed to be returned to the fleet in 2018," the Ukrainian outlet New Voice reported on November 15. "But in 2017, Vladimir Korolev, the then-commander in chief of the Russian navy, announced that this would happen in 2020. The completion of the repairs and modernization was later postponed to 2021."

However, no miracle happened in 2021: the tests were put off again until 2023, but when 2023 rolled around, Sevmash Director General Mikhail Budnichenko said that the "cruiser is in the final stage of repair and modernization."

"If we finish in time, the cruiser will go on sea trials in December of this year. If not, it will happen with the first open water in May of next year," the Russian state news agency TASS quoted Budnichenko as saying on June 21, 2023.

But apparently something went awry again.

"At more than 200 billion rubles ($2 billion), repairs and modernization costs had nearly doubled since 2023," Newsweek reported November 15.

"This is an item in the Russian fleet that will never be fully repaired but for which a lot of money can be requested every year," Lakiychuk said.

The project to modernize the ship has turned into a begging bowl, agreed Volodymyr Zablotsky, a retired Ukrainian naval captain of the first rank and a military and naval analyst for Defense Express.

"No one understood why [the Admiral Nakhimov] was needed even when construction began," Zablotsky told Kontur.

"But now here it is, and it's siphoning money from the budget. It's paychecks for admirals, and many people are feeding on all of this," he added.

"They [Russians] also need something to pour resources into and then demonstrate their strength. But in reality, this strength is hollow," Zablotsky said.

What exactly is the Admiral Nakhimov?

The keel of the Admiral Nakhimov, part of the Project 1144.2M Orlan family of vessels, was laid on May 17, 1983, according to open-source information. At the time, it was called the Kalinin.

"It was supposed to be an observation ship to monitor the arrival of American aircraft carriers in peacetime, and during a war to destroy them from a distance with cruise missiles, of which the ship had 20," Zablotsky said.

The ship is supposed to use nuclear reactors as its energy source, which in principle means practically unlimited cruising range.

On April 25, 1986, the Kalinin was launched, and on December 30, 1988, it was commissioned into the Soviet navy.

In April 1992, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia renamed it the Admiral Nakhimov.

"There's nothing to envy about the fate of this ship," Lakiychuk said.

The ship saw active service only until it was replaced by the Pyotr Veliky (Peter the Great) cruiser, which was the fourth from Project 1144.2 Orlan and the only Orlan ship that became part of the navy's combat lineup.

"The [Pyotr Veliky] became the flagship of their fleet. Its combat service history is pathetic, but ... [the Russians] could brag they had a nuclear-powered cruiser," Lakiychuk said.

Now, he said, history is repeating itself.

"Over the time it has been operated, the [Pyotr Veliky] has been worn out and needs to be retired," Lakiychuk said.

Useless in war

That ship's pending retirement could be the only reason why the Admiral Nakhimov may be launched someday. However, present-day developments raise a new question: what is the point now?

The ship would be defenseless in a war, said Zablotsky, since Russia has no "carrier-based fighter jets" now to back up air defense missile systems.

"Air defense missile systems do not provide 100% protection from air attack," he said. "All it would take is one missile to put [the Admiral Nakhimov] out of commission and ... destroy it completely."

"It could be destroyed by a high-precision weapon where it's based. This is the cross to bear in modern war," he said.

"The Russians should have understood that, but they're still pumping money into it anyway."