Satellite Reveals Russian Nuclear Flagship “Peter the Great” Resurfaces After Two-Year Scrapping Plans

A satellite image of the water area of the Severomorsk naval base of the Northern Fleet of the Russian Navy as of March 11, 2025 has appeared in the public domain, in which we can see, in particular, the nuclear cruiser Peter the Great of project 1144 Orlan, which is formally considered the largest warship and flagship of the fleet of the aggressor country.

This picture from an OSINT analyst MT_Anderson valuable if only because two years ago there were rumors about the intentions of the command of the Russian fleet to finally write off this ship due to the wear and tear of the physical resource, and there was no news about the departure of this ship from the summer of 2023.

In the picture, we can simply see that the Peter the Great is just standing at its berth in Severomorsk, and at first glance, nothing has changed in the status of this ship yet.

However, on the other hand, first of all, it is necessary to make an allowance for the lack of news about the departure of this nuclear cruiser to sea over the past two years, and this despite the fact that the “Peter the Great”, according to Russian propaganda, belonged to the “analogues”, if only because there were no nuclear-powered missile ships in the fleets of other countries, so any activity regarding the formal flagship of the Russian fleet has always had media support.

Moreover, rumors about the possible decommissioning of the nuclear cruiser “Peter the Great” appeared in July 2023 precisely against the backdrop of the excitement whether this ship would take part in the parade on the “Day of the Russian Navy”, which is traditionally held on July 30 every year in St. Petersburg. At the same time, it was stated that there was a minimum crew left on the cruiser, sufficient only to maintain the operability of the onboard systems.

Following this, in the same July 2023, a “refutation” appeared in the propaganda “media” that no one planned to write off the “Peter the Great”, and that this ship “is in the combat composition of the Northern Fleet” and at the same time “is preparing for repair and modernization work.”

Two years later, there have been no status updates. Therefore, it turns out that the “Peter the Great” is formally still part of the Northern Fleet of the Russian Navy and stands at its berth in Severomorsk, but in fact the status of this ship is “suspended”, so with equal probability this nuclear cruiser can go both for write-off and repair.

But it seems that here the Russian naval command postponed the final decision until the return to service of the nuclear cruiser Admiral Nakhimov, which has been under repair for almost 30 years, where the Russians “struck” more than $5 billion and on which the reactor was recently launched.

The nuclear cruiser “Peter the Great” was launched in 1988, but was finally commissioned by the Russian Navy only in 1998, at the time of a possible write-off in 2023 it had 25 years of active service. The length of the hull and full water replacement are 250 meters and 25 thousand tons, respectively, the total crew is 744 people.

The main armament is 20 P-700 Granit supersonic anti-ship missiles, plans were announced to install launchers for 80 Kalibr missiles or 40 Zircon missiles as part of the modernization of the ship.