Russia’s naval symbol Pyotr Velikiy deemed too worn out to repair

The nuclear-powered battlecruiser Pyotr Velikiy, one of the best-known symbols of the Russian Navy and the flagship of its Northern Fleet, is too worn out to repair, a Russian commission has preliminarily decided, the head of a Russian naval support organization told state news agency TASS on Oct. 30.

Vladimir Maltsev, who leads the All-Russian Navy Support Movement, said a special commission had concluded that repairing and modernizing the ship was not worthwhile, but that a final decision had not yet been announced, Meduza reported. He spoke on the sidelines of a forum marking 330 years of the Russian Navy. The Russian Defense Ministry and the Navy have not commented.

“The commission has already made a preliminary decision, the final one has not yet been announced: the cruiser cannot be restored. The ship has a certain degree of wear,” said Maltsev.

Maltsev himself said he believes the ship should be modernized if at all possible, calling the Project 1144 Orlan cruisers, known in NATO as the Kirov class, among the most successful designs in the history of shipbuilding.

The Pyotr Velikiy was laid down in Leningrad in 1986 and joined the fleet in 1998, the last of four Orlan-class cruisers and the only one to stay in active service through the post-Soviet decades. The Orlan ships are often described as the largest surface combatants ever built apart from aircraft carriers. At about 251 meters (823 feet) long and roughly 28,000 tons, the Pyotr Velikiy carries P-700 Granit anti-ship missiles and S-300F long-range air defense missiles, and it has served as the Northern Fleet’s flagship and led its major exercises for more than two decades. The ship has been laid up at a pier in Severomorsk since autumn 2022, The Barents Observer reported.

Its fate is tied to its sister ship, the Admiral Nakhimov. Russia planned to modernize the Pyotr Velikiy as soon as work on the Nakhimov was finished, so the Navy would always keep at least one cruiser of the class in service, a source in the defense industry told TASS. The Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk, which handles the work, can take only one of the ships at a time. The Nakhimov’s overhaul was supposed to end in 2018 but ran about eight years late, and its cost doubled to more than 200 billion rubles. By the time it neared completion, the Pyotr Velikiy’s service life had run out, according to the TASS source.

The Admiral Nakhimov left Severodvinsk for final sea trials at the end of May 2026 after nearly three decades out of service, and Russian Navy commander Adm. Alexander Moiseyev has said it should join the Northern Fleet by the end of the year. If the Pyotr Velikiy is retired, the Nakhimov will be Russia’s only nuclear-powered cruiser. The two other ships of the class, the Admiral Ushakov and Admiral Lazarev, have already been taken out of service, and Russia dropped earlier plans to bring all four back.

TASS reported plans to retire the Pyotr Velikiy in 2023, but a source quoted by RIA Novosti said the same year that there were no plans to decommission it.

Russia’s only aircraft carrier faces a similar outlook. The Admiral Kuznetsov has been under repair since 2017 and was badly damaged by a fire in 2019, and Russian media have reported that work on it has largely stopped while the Navy decides whether to return the carrier to service or scrap it. No official decision on the Kuznetsov has been announced either.