Russia’s most powerful warship, the nuclear-powered battlecruiser Pyotr Veliky, deemed too worn out to repair

A special commission has concluded that repairing and modernizing the heavy nuclear-powered missile cruiser Pyotr Veliky is not practical, said Vladimir Maltsev, head of the All-Russian Movement in Support of the Navy.

“The cruiser cannot be restored. The ship has a certain degree of wear,” he said. Maltsev stressed that this is a preliminary conclusion, and a final decision has not yet been announced.

A source in the naval sector told the Russian state news agency TASS as early as 2023 about plans to retire the Pyotr Veliky from service. According to the source, the idea of decommissioning it emerged because of the prolonged repair of the cruiser Admiral Nakhimov.

A source who spoke to the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti claimed the same year that there were no plans to decommission the Pyotr Veliky or remove it from the Navy’s active service.

The Pyotr Veliky is the flagship of Russia’s Northern Fleet and the only active nuclear-powered cruiser of the Project 1144 Orlan class. Aside from aircraft carriers, it ranks among the largest warships in the world and is one of the most powerful surface ships in the Russian navy.

Four such ships were built under the project between 1977 and 1996. The Admiral Ushakov and Admiral Lazarev have already been decommissioned, while the heavy nuclear-powered cruiser Admiral Nakhimov went to sea this year for the first time after 28 years of repairs. Plans called for returning it to the Navy by the end of the year.

The Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk, which handles the cruisers’ modernization, can take on only one ship of the series at a time. Repairs on the Pyotr Veliky were initially planned to begin after work on the Admiral Nakhimov was completed in 2018. However, the repairs dragged on, and the cost doubled over that time, exceeding 200 billion rubles.