Dmitry Gorenburg, at the Center for Naval Analyses in the US, said the decision to promote an admiral from the Baltic fleet as the new commander over an officer from within the Pacific fleet suggested the Kremlin was unhappy. The US-based Institute for the Study of War agreed. “The snap exercises and subsequent relief of the fleet commander is probably more confirmation of the sorry state of the Russian navy,” he said. However, within days of his order, the commander of the once-feared Pacific fleet was reassigned to a job overseeing military gyms, while the flagship of Russia’s Northern fleet was earmarked for the scrap.īlake Herzinger, a research fellow at the US Studies Centre in Sydney, said this reflected the “below-average leadership” in the Russian military. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, thought he had pulled off a diplomatic masterstroke by ordering his Pacific fleet, one of the Russian navy’s most powerful armadas, to go on exercise as China’s defence minister was visiting Moscow earlier this month. A military band roared into life as Ekaterina Bogdasarova, a millionaire socialite married to a powerful governor, smashed a bottle of champagne against the Kremlin’s latest submarine.īut the pomp and glamour of the launch of the Mozhaysk at the naval shipyard in St Petersburg this week came at the end of a torrid month for the Russian navy, which analysts said has been exposed as often decrepit and dysfunctional.

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