The fire aboard the medium aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov broke out during repairs in the morning of December 12 to be fully extinguished by about 08:00 a.m. Moscow time on December 13© Lev Fedoseyev/TASS

MOSCOW, January 30. /TASS/. The fire that broke out aboard Russia’s sole aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov in December damaged some electric power cables as the preliminary fault detection results indicate, two sources in the shipbuilding industry told TASS on Thursday.

“The fault detection aboard the aircraft-carrying cruiser continues and the full estimate of the damage will become known later. It has been preliminarily established that the fire in the area of the blaze damaged a whole number of electric cables laid in the tracks along the board,” one of the sources said.

According to the other source, “the burnt cables were largely slated for their replacement during the repairs and so this damage will not affect the schedule of the work and will not increase its cost significantly.er

TASS has no official confirmation of this information yet.

The fire aboard the medium aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov broke out during repair works in the morning of December 12 and was fully extinguished at about 08:00 a.m. Moscow time on December 13. The aircraft carrier is currently under repairs in Murmansk. As the Zvyozdochka Shipyard specified earlier, the fire erupted in the hold of the ship’s first power compartment.

Russian Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov said in an interview with the newspaper Izvestia in late December that the work to estimate the damage done to the Admiral Kuznetsov would be completed at the end of the first quarter of 2020 and there were no plans to reschedule the timeframe of the carrier’s repairs.

The Project 1143.5 heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser Admiral Kuznetsov (the medium-class carrier according to the Western classification), was floated out in 1985 under the name of Leonid Brezhnev (later Tbilisi). It entered service with the Navy in December 1990.

The aircraft carrier is designated to gain superiority at sea and in the air in the areas of the fleet’s operation to ensure the Navy’s combat sustainability, deliver air strikes against enemy targets, and support troops’ landing operations.

The warship displaces 59,000 tonnes and has a length of 305 meters. The aircraft carrier has a full speed capacity of 200,000 horsepower and develops a speed of up to 30 knots. The warship can carry up to 50 aircraft, including deck-based Su-33 and MiG-29K/KUB fighter jets.

From November 2016 to January 2017, the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov performed tasks as part of the Russian Navy’s Mediterranean permanent taskforce. During its deployment, the carrier’s fighters delivered strikes against terrorist positions in Syria, destroying a total of over 1,200 militants’ facilities.

(C)TASS 2020