An excellent video about the only Russian aircraft carrier cruiser, Admiral Kuznetsov, with a special stop on how the Russians stole this ship. Spoiler: completely insidiously – by hijacking a ship on the day of the referendum for the Independence of Ukraine, December 1, 1991.
During 1991, Kuznetsov was in Sevastopol, where it participated in testing the Su-27K fighter. Especially for the hijacking operation, Deputy Commander of the Northern Fleet, Vice Admiral Yuri Ustimenko, urgently flew to Crimea, who landed in Ukraine two-thirds of the crew and officers and midshipmen who did not want to betray their homeland, and with a third of the ship’s command, late in the evening, without giving no signals, left the Sevastopol raid on the Admiral and headed for the Bosphorus. The Turkish authorities did not prevent passage through the strait.
The factory team also had to be disembarked, but the cruiser, for a moment, was still unfinished and was undergoing testing itself, the second stage of which, according to the plan, was supposed to begin only in the fall of 1992.
In order not to leave the Kuznetsov to Ukraine, the command of the Navy until the completion of state tests, on the last day decided to transfer it to the base of the Russian Northern Fleet in the Murmansk region. In a matter of days after the theft, the ship, not ready for operation, was included in the Northern Fleet of the Russian Navy, and was also appointed flagship
