The unfinished cruiser Ukraine was proposed to be shot and scuttled
Five years ago, Petro Poroshenko signed a decree breaking the 1993 agreement with Russia, according to which both countries should jointly resolve issues regarding military-technical facilities that were not completed at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Experts believed that Poroshenko’s decree, first of all, concerned the unfinished cruiser “Ukraine”, which had been moored at the plant’s berth since the collapse of the USSR - Kyiv was never able to put the ship into operation due to lack of money. Then the budget for maintaining the cruiser dried up.
Ukraine previously considered selling the ship to China or India, but the cruiser remains unsold to this day.
And here is a new initiative.
It is necessary to remove weapons from the unfinished cruiser "Ukraine" and shoot the ship during exercises, in order, for example, to find out the weaknesses of Project 1164, according to which the current flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, the cruiser "Moscow", was also built.
Ukrainian military expert Taras Chmut stated this in his blog, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
According to Chmut, all working equipment and weapons from the Ukraina can be transferred to other Ukrainian ships in service, and the hull can be used for other purposes.
“Remove all weapons and systems for further installation on the Sagaidachny, Priluki, Olefirenko and other existing ships/boats/vessels.
The hull can either be recycled for metal through an auction, or used as a target for Neptune/aviation/torpedoes. At the same time, we will check the strengths/weaknesses of the 1164 project.
You can shoot from the R-360MTs, you can sink it under a tourist location. The key is to close this issue once and for all,” says Chmut.
The proposal that arose during the discussion to turn the ship into a museum was wisely rejected by commentators, because, based on the fate of the “Ukraine,” the cruiser can only be a symbol of the failure of an independent state.
“A museum of Ukraine’s inability to think strategically and count its money,” said Nikolai Beleskov, an expert at the Ukrainian Institute for Strategic Studies.
Let us recall that the cruiser laid down in 1984 (an analogue of the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet "Moscow") was transferred to Ukraine in 1993 with 75% readiness.
Under President Leonid Kuchma, the ship's hull on the stocks was brought to 95% readiness in 1998.
The possibility of selling the cruiser to Russia was also considered, but the deal never took place - during the time of Viktor Yanukovych, a commission arriving from the Russian Federation found out that the project was very outdated, its commissioning required significant costs, and the price required by Kiev was excessively high.
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