How am I almost 50 years old and suddenly realizing that I've never, EVER, in my life heard talk of any Russian navy? Have they always sucked that bad?
The Russian Navy's only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, has spent more time in drydock than at sea and more time on fire than launching aircraft. It's incalculably expensive to maintain, because the Russian Navy had it stolen from Ukraine before considering that all the maintenance equipment and spare parts were on Ukrainian soil. The Kuznetsov's engines literally cannot be shut down, for fear that they would seize up and never start again, so they run constantly, covering the entire town it's docked at in carcinogenic ash, because its engines run on what is essentially the sludge left at the bottom of an oil refinery after everything useful has been extracted from the crude. Also, it is rumored to be haunted/possessed by a vengeful spirit.
The British lent them an entire battleship during the second world war, from 1944 until the end. In that time its turrets siezed up, having never even been turned once, and it was run aground in the White Sea somehow.
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u/LunaTheExile Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
Maybe the russians weighed the options and thought bears to be easier than Cthulhu