Russia's only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, has not sailed since 2017, and Moscow has stopped repairing it. Here is why it failed, and what the Russian Navy built instead. The answer starts with a statement. In July 2025, Andrei Kostin, chairman of the board of Russia's United Shipbuilding Corporation, told Kommersant that there was no point in repairing the Admiral Kuznetsov any further, and that it would either be sold or disposed of. Nine years of work sit behind that sentence, with Western estimates putting the spending close to one billion dollars. No official Russian disposal order has been published, and the Defence Ministry has said nothing either way. Why the ship failed comes down to three things, and only one of them was bad luck. The accidents are the visible part. The floating dock PD-50 sank beneath the carrier in October 2018, taking with it the only dock in Russia large enough to hold her, and a seventy tonne crane fell onto the flight deck. A welding fire in December 2019 killed two men and injured fourteen. A shipyard director was arrested over alleged embezzlement tied to the refit. The record is the second part. One combat deployment in thirty six years, to Syria in 2016, which cost two aircraft to arrestor cable failures within a single month. Satellite imagery showed much of the air wing simply moved ashore to an airbase and flew from a runway instead. The design is the part that was never fixable. A twelve degree ski jump instead of a catapult caps what an aircraft can weigh on launch, which means every sortie trades fuel against weapons. It also ruled out fixed wing airborne early warning entirely, so the ship saw a fraction of what rival carriers could see. Then the part nobody is covering. What Russia actually bought instead. The Admiral Nakhimov battlecruiser, rebuilt across twenty seven calendar years with an estimated 176 missile cells, which completed sea trials in 2026 and is expected to enter service by the end of the year, though no flag raising ceremony has been reported. Five Yasen-M class attack submarines now in service, with a target of twelve to fourteen by 2035. A fleet rebuilt around missiles rather than aviation, and a Navy commander who has pushed any new carrier decision out to the 2040s. The contrast makes it land. China operates three carriers, including Fujian, commissioned on 5 November 2025 with electromagnetic catapults. Its first, Liaoning, was built on the Kuznetsov's own unfinished sister hull, the former Varyag. India operates two, INS Vikramaditya and INS Vikrant. Russia now becomes the only permanent member of the UN Security Council without an operational aircraft carrier. Every claim here is hedged to what is on the record. Russian Ministry of Defence figures from the Syria deployment are identified as claims. The Nakhimov's missile cell count is an open source estimate. Nothing has been signed on the Kuznetsov's fate. Sources include Reuters, Kommersant, Izvestia, USNI Proceedings, Naval News, The War Zone, the Barents Observer, Zona Militar, Army Recognition and Xinhua. Subscribe to The War Dockyard for naval analysis that explains the decisions behind the warships. #AdmiralKuznetsov #RussianNavy #AircraftCarrier
Source: Why Russia Gave Up on the Admiral Kuznetsov, Its Only Aircraft Carrier
