On November 1, 2026, the Russian news agency TASS reported that a special government commission had officially canceled the modernization program for the battlecruiser PYOTR VELIKIY, a nuclear-powered KIROV-class ship assigned to the Northern Fleet and long idle at its pier.

The decision stems from the considerable wear of the ship and its onboard systems, and from the lack of funds needed to carry out an operation similar to the one performed on the nearly identical sister ship ADMIRAL NAKHIMOV, which is close to returning to service. The original plan called for modernizing the PYOTR VELIKIY along the lines of the ADMIRAL NAKHIMOV work. However, the upgrades absorbed a large amount of money, estimated at around $5 billion, and took 12 years to complete. Laid down in 1986 as YURI ANDROPOV, launched in 1989, and renamed PYOTR VELIKIY in 1992, the ship entered service with the Russian Navy in April 1998 and was the only KIROV-class battlecruiser operated by the Russian Navy in roughly the past 25 years. During that time it took part in numerous exercises and carried out several long-range deployments, often taking it thousands of miles from its home base at Severomorsk. Operating in the Eastern Mediterranean, it also took part in military operations during the Russian intervention in Syria. At the end of 2022, the ship returned to Severomorsk for the last time, awaiting a final decision on what was to have been the first true modernization cycle of its career.

The PYOTR VELIKIY is thus among the latest casualties of another wave of budget cuts imposed on the Russian Navy, in line with the many decommissionings and scrappings of naval units that followed the fall of the Soviet Union. That period was marked by limited funds and financial hardship, which left a meager budget to maintain what had once been the large Soviet blue-water fleet. During the subsequent rebuilding of the Russian Navy, most attention and financial resources went to the submarine component, leaving the surface fleet in a state of chronic underfunding and reduced effectiveness. As a result, new construction focused on frigates and corvettes, albeit with good missile capabilities. The sole aircraft carrier in service, the ADMIRAL KUZNETSOV, has also fallen victim to Navy budget cuts. Its modernization work, begun in 2018 at a shipyard of the United Shipbuilding Corporation in Severodvinsk, was suspended in 2025 following numerous accidents and setbacks, likely foreshadowing a fate similar to that of the PYOTR VELIKIY.

The departure of the ADMIRAL KUZNETSOV would leave only 3 front-line vessels in the Russian Navy: the aforementioned ADMIRAL NAKHIMOV and two SLAVA-class cruisers, the MARSHAL USTINOV (serving with the Northern Fleet) and the VARYAG, currently flagship of the Russian Pacific Fleet. However, budget constraints caused by the war in Ukraine could take one of the two SLAVA-class ships out of service, since both have been in service for about 40 years without undergoing a thorough overhaul.

Follow us on Telegram, Facebook and X.