Admiral Kuznetsov

Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza Kuznetsov (Russian: Адмира́л фло́та Сове́тского Сою́за Кузнецо́в, "Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Kuznetsov") is an aircraft carrier (heavy aircraft cruiser in Russian classification) which has served as the flagship of the Russian Navy, although she has been out of service since 2017. She was built by the Black Sea Shipyard, the sole manufacturer of Soviet aircraft carriers, in Nikolayev within the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukrainian SSR) and launched in 1985, becoming fully operational in the Russian Navy in 1995. The initial name of the ship was Riga; she was launched as Leonid Brezhnev, embarked on sea trials as Tbilisi, before she was finally named after Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Nikolay Gerasimovich Kuznetsov. It was the last aircraft carrier of the Russian navy.

She was originally commissioned in the Soviet Navy, and was intended to be the lead ship of the two-ship Kuznetsov class. However, her sister ship Varyag was still incomplete when the Soviet Union was disbanded in 1991. The second hull was eventually sold by Ukraine to China, completed at Dalian and commissioned as Liaoning. The retirement of the smaller Kiev-class carriers in the 1990s left Admiral Kuznetsov as the sole carrier in the Russian Navy. In November 2016, the carrier first participated in combat operations, launching 420 aircraft sorties during the Aleppo offensive, as part of Russian intervention in the Syrian civil war.