President Vladimir Putin of russia has visited the flag-raising ceremony on the K-555 Knyaz Pozharsky nuclear submarine cruiser (Project 955A Borey-A class). The newly-appointed ship is to take up the role of a carrier for nuclear ICBMs.
While this was the central topic of the report, published by a local media outlet, what attracts attention is the passage about russian military considering two futures for its only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov. Already over 40 years afloat, at least formally, it entered neverending repairs in 2017 and has been inoperable ever since. As stated, the two possibilities are, the ship will be either disposed of or sold.
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In this case, it is particularly indicative who was the person to voice these two options: Andrey Kostin, chairman of the russian VTB Bank and the one who had assumed all control of the United Shipbuilding Corporation after a power transfer in 2023.
The presentation of the news is also notable. At first, the author of this report writes they allegedly saw the Kuznetsov near Murmansk, and that according to their impression, the aircraft carrier had already begun to be dismantled. To which Kostin replied that "the ship is in their eparchy, it makes no sense to repair it, and that in his opinion the issue will be resolved by scrapping the entire Kuznetsov or selling it."
To put it simply, a purely commercial point of view has emerged about one of the symbols of the russian military prestige, that this both conceptually and physically obsolete ship is better to simply sell or scrap than to continue spending resources on something that offers nothing of practical value.
Furthermore, this perspective was voiced during an event attended by the Kremlin leader personally, which implies that the possibility of selling or disposing of the Kuznetsov is not just a a throwaway idea but is really considered among the top military-political leadership of the russian federation.
Now, from Defense Express, if we look at the list of potential buyers of Kuznetsov, the question at hand is whether the russians will be able to make a proper commodity out of this ship that is actually suitable for sale.
Among the countries loyal to the Kremlin, no one should be interested in the Kuznetsov right now: India is heabily investing in national production of aircraft carriers; and Brazil is using the Atlantico (former British helicopter carrier HMS Ocean) as its flagship and plans to purchase two more British amphibious assault ships, the HMS Albion and the HMS Bulwark.
In this context, one option that should not be ruled out is that VTB Bank, as the manager of USC assets, will formally "sell" Kuznetsov to some government agency of russia, only in order to turn this ship into another exhibit in one of those Patriot military tech museums.
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