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Today, there are a lot of updates regarding the Russian Navy.
Recently, it’s been a bad few days for the Russian Navy, as the Ukrainian campaign has been reinforced by nature and even the Russians’ own incompetence. Spanning from the Black Sea and Saint Petersburg to the far east, Russian naval power and projection is falling apart at the seams.
The biggest news is that after years of repairs and accidents, Russians officially lost their last aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov.
The massive ship has now been decommissioned and is to be scrapped for parts. The main reason for this is that the ship spent most of its service life in port and under repairs, and the ability of Russian military to maintain an expensive and very vulnerable aircraft carrier has disappeared.
Western naval analysts joke that when the boat was not on fire, the massive smoke plume from its diesel exhaust made it seem like it was. Most notably, the aircraft that make up its airwings are no longer in production, and due to the ramp on the flight deck putting too high a strain on the front gears if the weight was too high, their fuel load and therefore operational range were already largely limited.
The list of incidents during its service is also long, with a few notable examples being the approximately 300,000 ton oil spill onto the Irish coast, 5 of its jets crashing into the ocean during operations, as the arresting wires kept snapping or they simply ran out of fuel, and several crew members dying because of the water filtration systems failure during its maiden voyage.
The bad days continue, as one of the largest earthquakes in recent history caused a tsunami to sweep along Russia’s far Eastern shores. Recently released satellite footage shows extensive damage to Russia’s two main naval bases here, one of which houses a large part of Russia’s nuclear submarine fleet, with the submarines visibly missing from the photos and possibly under repair. Additionally, the Russian Academy of Sciences reports that the southern part of Kamchatka shifted two whole meters to the southeast as a result of the earthquake, causing speculations of much larger damage to Russian naval facilities not visible from satellite footage.
Russia’s nuclear submarine fleet then took another hit, as Ukrainian military intelligence revealed it had obtained a full set of classified documents and schematics on Russia’s newest strategic nuclear submarine, the Project 955A Borei-class. They released some of them online and stated that the classified documents include information about the submarine's survivability systems, which entered service just over three weeks ago. Ukrainian military intelligence also made a statement saying they had already identified several weak points in the Russian sub, right before Zelensky authorized a new series of covert operations, the details of which remain unknown.
Lastly, during Navy Day, celebrating the temporary existence and history of Russia’s fleets, as well as its specialized naval infantry units currently fighting in Ukraine.
Russian warships from all four Russian fleets were scheduled to hold a parade and gun salutes through the harbor of Saint Petersburg, as well as airshows and ground troops conducting displays on land. However, the parade and all its surrounding events were canceled due to safety concerns, as a single Ukrainian Lyuti drone was spotted flying over Leningrad Oblast. As there were no reports of any confirmed hits, Ukrainians likely simply decided to fly a drone in the general vicinity and let Russia cancel the parade themselves, unable to intercept a possible threat from the skies.
Overall, the loss of their only carrier is significant, as these types of ships allow a navy to exert strong military influence and capabilities on a global scale. Extensive damage to its military bases and possibly also vessels on the Pacific coast results in a serious deterioration of both its regional influence and strategic deterrence capabilities. Ukraine having found weaknesses in the new Russian submarine’s defenses through classified documents, and the news of additional covert operations being in the works, only exacerbates this effect. With Russia’s global dominance already increasingly deteriorating, and parades meant to counteract this trend being called off, this is another strong hit to Russian military geopolitical relevance, as more pressure is shifted onto the already-strained Russian ground-based assets.
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