Russia's navy has limited involvement in Ukraine, but like the rest of Russia's military, it is still feeling the effects of the war.
Ukraine has sunk a handful of Russian naval ships but the only major one has been the guided-missile cruiser Moskva — an embarrassing loss because it was the Black Sea Fleet's flagship. Away from the battlefield, however, Moscow's setbacks in Ukraine appear to be affecting its naval modernization plans.
This seems most evident with Russia's largest surface warships: its Kirov-class nuclear-powered battlecruisers, Admiral Nakhimov and Pyotr Velikiy, and the Admiral Kuznetsov, Russia's sole aircraft carrier.
They should be the most capable vessels in Russia's surface fleet, but a combination of maintenance issues, funding woes, and poor operational records has made them the Russian navy's biggest headaches.
The Kirov-class battlecruisers emerged from a mid-1960s Soviet project to create nuclear-powered warships capable of destroying the nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarines in service with NATO navies.
Known in Russia as the Project 1144 Orlan class, the design was eventually merged with a competing cruiser project. Construction began on the first ship, called Kirov, in 1974. By the time it was commissioned in 1980, Kirov-class battlecruisers were meant to able to take on every type of enemy vessel.
Only four of five planned vessels were actually built. The first three — Kirov, Frunze, and Kalinin — entered service in 1980, 1984, and 1988, respectively. The fourth, Pyotr Velikiy, was commissioned into Russia's navy in 1998.
At 827 feet long and with a full displacement of 28,000 tons, Kirov-class battlecruisers are the largest surface warships in the world other than aircraft carriers. Each ship has two nuclear reactors, giving them a range limited only by the endurance of their crews and their machinery.
The Kirovs are also perhaps the most heavily armed warships ever. Pyotr Velikiy, the only ship still in active service, has a main armament of 20 P-700 Granit anti-ship cruise missiles, each of which can carry a 1,653-pound warhead (or a nuclear warhead), has a range of 388 miles, and a top speed of Mach 2.5.
For air defense, Pyotr Velikiy carries 72 S-300 surface-to-air missiles, 128 3K95 Kinzhal SAMs, and six 3M87 Kortik close-in weapon systems, each of which is armed with eight 9M311 SAMs. To defend against submarines, it has one RBU 6000 and two RBU 1000 anti-submarine mortars and 10 torpedo tubes that fire anti-submarine missiles. The ship also has a single twin-barreled AK-130 130mm gun at its rear, just before a helicopter hangar capable of holding multiple Ka-27 and Ka-31 helicopters.
Initially the Kirovs' primary mission was to sink US Navy aircraft carriers and their escorts. The battlecrusiers were to take on an escort role of their own with the development of the Admiral Kuznetsov-class carriers, with which the Soviet Navy planned to form carrier battlegroups like those of the US Navy.