Russia to redeploy 28,000-ton nuclear battlecruiser after 3 decades

Russia’s nuclear-powered battlecruiser Admiral Nakhimov, a 28,000-ton Kirov-class warship originally laid down in 1983 and launched in 1986, has returned to sea trials after nearly three decades. The ship, renamed in 1992 after Admiral Pavel Nakhimov, has been undergoing an extensive modernization since 2014 at the Sevmash shipyard. This overhaul, described as the most comprehensive refit of any Russian surface combatant in decades, aims to transform the vessel into the future flagship of the Russian Navy. The ship’s two nuclear reactors were restarted earlier in 2025, and it recently began factory sea trials in the White Sea, marking a significant milestone after multiple delays that pushed the project’s completion from an initial 2018 estimate to now expected around 2024-2025. Key upgrades include the installation of 174 vertical launch cells, surpassing the missile capacity of comparable surface combatants like China’s Type