What Is To Be Done?

They're trying to decide what to do with the unfinished cruiser "Ukraina".

26 May 2008 - The missile cruiser "Ukraina" has been laid up at one of the wharves at the shipyard in Nikolayev for more than 20 years. Burning through a million taxpayer dollars a year, the ship continues to rot at the shipyard, gradually becoming obsolete.

Yevgeniy Borisov, the Ukraine's General Constructor for Military Ship Building indicated that the 96 percent completed figure is "virtual" since there hasn't been any preventive maintenance done.

The warantee has run out on the machinery mountings and completion for use as a cruiser is "unrealistic".

Aside from selling her to another country, disposal or conversion into a museum, Mikhail Samus', an expert at the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Research has advanced the idea of using the missile cruiser as a sea-based anti-missile platform.

The "Ukraina" was the fourth and final cruiser of its class. The construcion of the "Ukraina" should have finished in 1994. The cost of construction was 135.3 million Soviet rubles at the end of the 80s, converted into dollars at the Soviet State Bank rate - $225.5 million dollars. Up to 1992, $171 million was put into its construction. From 1992 to 2003 - around $24 million, aside from the $5 million spent on upkeep of the ship.

(Photo: Navy.ru)