The fleet’s only guided-missile cruiser, the region’s biggest warship, was seen by many as a symbol of Russia’s hope of its maritime power rising again after the Soviet collapse.Īccording to Russian media, the warship enjoyed the patronage of Yuriy Luzhkov, the perennial mayor of Moscow, who zealously advocated the idea of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in the 1990s. Due to the extreme lack of financing, the Russian command even had to concede the warship’s parts and components to pay for the works. The missile cruiser spent the 1990s at the Mykolaiv shipyard for repairs. The fall of the Soviet Union in late 1991 was a blow to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. But due to awful weather and strong sea swell, the Soviet delegation had to stay and hold talks on different warships. The ship participated in the Malta Summit of 1989, where Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. The project requires massive investment and is questionable in terms of the old vessel’s applicability nowadays.Īs a large and mighty warship, in the late Soviet era, the Slava also served ceremonial duties. Time and again, for years, many in Ukraine have called on completing the ship’s construction. The third ship, Admiral Ustinov, serves with Russia’s Northern Fleet.Īnother warship of the class, the Ukraina, was not finished and is still moored at the Mykolaiv shipyard in Ukraine. Two of the three completed ships eventually became Russian flagships: the Slava with the Black Sea Fleet and the Varyag with the Pacific Fleet. Russia has never built another Slava-class ship on its own. But just three were completed and commissioned before the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Soviet Union planned on building a total of 10 warships of the Slava-class in Ukraine’s Mykolaiv, one of the key shipyards in the USSR. and NATO battleships and aircraft carrier groups, as well as aircraft and submarines, covering all domains from undersea to the air. The Slava-class ships were to pose a threat to key U.S. The Slava was the second most powerful class of Russian warships, following nuclear-powered Kirov-class missile cruisers, the world’s largest combatant warships. They were supposed to become “aircraft carriers' killers” confronting the essence of the U.S. The Slava was the first warship of the 1164 Atlant, the Soviet project to build a class of modern and powerful guided-missile cruisers, known as the Slava-class cruisers. She was laid down in 1976 and launched in 1983 under the name Slava (“Glory”). The Moskva has had a complicated history. The sensational loss challenges Russia’s status as a naval power and undermines its air defense capabilities against Ukraine in the Black Sea. Moreover, it is a key warship lost in combat to a nation that has effectively no navy. And it is the first Russian flagship destroyed and lost since World War II. The Moskva is the first major warship destroyed in combat by a Ukrainian anti-ship missile. The Russian catastrophe will leave a mark in history textbooks. Missile cruiser Moskva, the Black Sea Fleet flagship, sank following what Ukraine claims was a double strike by the Neptune coastal defense missile system recently accepted in service. On April 14, after 49 days of Russia’s all-out war, Ukraine inflicted a devastating blow upon the Kremlin’s pride and the symbol of its naval power in the Black Sea. The Russian-Ukrainian war has produced yet another hallmark event in the history of warfare.
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