When the erstwhile Soviet Union disintegrated, Ukraine sold the Kuznetsov-class cruiser carrier to China. More than two decades later, a Russian political party has pitched the idea to the Russian government of buying back the aircraft carrier from Beijing.
On January 5, Sergey Karginov, a leader of the Russian Liberal Democratic Party, suggested that the Russian government buy back the Soviet aircraft carrier that Ukraine had previously sold to China, RIA Novosti reported.
The Liberal Democratic Party is a right-wing, ultranationalist party that supports the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Karginov told the media: “The unfinished aircraft carrier Varyag was handed over to Ukraine and then sold to China to convert it into a casino. After China received the ship, it completed construction and renamed it the Liaoning. The ship was originally supposed to become one of the main ships of the USSR.”
He suggested that the Russian government buy the aircraft carrier from China and induct it into service in the name of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the founder of his party who died last year. Zhirinovsky was an ultra-nationalist politician who shared Vladimir Putin’s disdain for Ukraine and other former Soviet countries.
Karginov made a very blunt suggestion, saying, “After the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine preferred to sell it, in fact, for a price of a few bottles of vodka or the price of scrap metal. Given the current situation, I propose that Russia buy this aircraft carrier from China, in the name of Zhirinovsky, the founder of the Liberal Democratic Party, and make it the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet.”
The call to induct the Liaoning carrier into the Black Sea Fleet is significant, as the naval force stationed there has been pivotal in launching attacks against Ukraine. The pitch coincidentally comes when Ukraine has said there is currently just one Russian vessel with no Kalibr cruise missiles in the Black Sea.
In addition, Ukraine has sporadically launched attacks against Crimea and the Sevastopol Port, which is home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
It may be a far-fetched idea to purchase China’s first-ever aircraft carrier, Liaoning. However, it may be worth looking back at how China devised a master plan to acquire the vessel from Ukraine and went completely rogue in the process.
How China Acquired Its First Aircraft Carrier?
China launched its first aircraft carrier, Liaoning, named after a Chinese province, in 2012. The vessel was a refurbished Soviet Kuznetsov-class cruiser carrier purchased in an incomplete state.
Due to its potent arsenal of 12 P-700 Granit anti-ship missile systems, Kuznetsov was technically classified as an “aircraft-carrying cruiser.” This technicality mattered because the Montreux Convention forbade “aircraft carriers” from traveling from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean via the Bosporus Strait if they weighed more than 15,000 tons.
The second ship in its class, the Varyag, was barely two-thirds finished in Ukraine before the Soviet Union fell because it lacked weapons and electrical equipment. When work on the project ended in 1992, the cash-strapped Ukrainian government tried everything in its power to sell the 55,000 tons of useless metal decaying in its Mykolaiv shipyard.
The PLA Navy wanted the Varyag, and Beijing dispatched a team to inspect it and advised buying it.
However, Chinese leadership worried that acquiring a carrier might exacerbate tensions as the country sought foreign investment and opened its economy significantly. The People’s Liberation Army hatched a plan to purchase without raising eyebrows in the West.
In 1996, a group of PLA officers led by intelligence chief Gen. Ji Shengde approached Xu Zengping, a former PLA basketball player who had turned into a successful businessman organizing international events. The strategy was to have Xu purchase the carrier under his name, presumably so that it might serve as a casino. This would eliminate any scope of suspicion on the PLA.
Xu traveled to Ukraine in January 1998 and met with the shipyard’s proprietors. He agreed to buy the carrier for $20 million after four days of negotiations during which massive bribes were offered. The payment was made almost a year later with a late fee of $10 million superimposed on the negotiated amount.
The PLA had decided that the PLA Navy would later acquire and assemble the aircraft after the political environment had improved. A two-part news story by the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post revealed the plan in 2015.
After years of dilly-dallying and several obstructions related to its shipping to China, the carrier finally arrived at the port of Dalian in the province of Liaoning in March 2002. It was placed in a dry dock three years later for a thorough refurbishment, including sandblasting away all the rust and restoring and fitting the engines in 2011.
The carrier was tailored to suit China’s requirements and was finally launched in 2012 and is now the mainstay of the PLA Navy. The Russian ultranationalist leader may want the carrier back, but it is doubtful that China would let go of a vessel acquired after several years of struggle and extensive planning.
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