Russia’s only aircraft carrier, which was involved in an oil spill off the Irish coast, among other mishaps, is to be scrapped or sold, but it is expanding its submarine fleet.
The Admiral Kuznetsov is believed to have been responsible for a spill of 400 to 500 tonnes of fuel off the West Cork coast in early 2009 when involved in refuelling at sea.
The European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA), which picked up the spill through its CleanSeaNet satellite monitoring system on February 14th, 2009, said it was confirmed by an Irish Coast Guard helicopter.
Initial estimates put the spill at around 1 000 tonnes, but further aerial surveillance by the Irish and British maritime authorities concluded that it was in the region of 400-500 tonnes.
Several days later, a CleanSeaNet image showed that the slick had expanded to 8 x 1km and had drifted around 30km east-north-east of the original position, EMSA said.
“The spill was closely monitored until it naturally dispersed without hitting the coastline. Fifteen SAR images were acquired between February 14th and March 8th 2009 to monitor the affected area,”it said.
As the journal Foreign Policy reports, it was one of a number of incidents involving the Soviet-built ship which had been Russia’s only aircraft carrier for 40 years.
These incidents included cancelled deployments, and the loss of two aircraft when it was sent to Syria in 2016 in support of President Bashar al-Assad.
In 2018, a dry dock in which it was undergoing repairs in Murmansk sank, and one person was killed and ten injured the following year in a fire on board. There was another fire on board in December 2022.
Foreign Policy reports that “any snickering at the Russian Navy would be sorely misplaced”, and quotes a former Russian Pacific fleet commander, Sergei Avakyants, as stating that the aircraft carrier is part of a “bygone era”, and a “huge, expensive structure that can be destroyed in a few minutes with modern weapons”.
Instead, Russia has been expanding its submarine fleet, the journal notes.
“Submarines are in vogue. Right now, the United States, Europe, and Russia all have fleets that are around the same size—but they’re all looking to expand,” it reports.
Read Foreign Policy here
