Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 30 – Russian plans
to build a giant icebreaker to ensure year-round transit over the Northern Sea
Route, plans Moscow has announced with such pomp, are unlikely to be realized even
a decade from now and will by every indication do more to enrich the Kremlin’s
friends than to break the ice for other ships, Aleksand Kovalenko says.
The
ship, already called “The Leader” – and one can only imagine whom that refers
to – is supposed to weigh more than 71,000 tons and generate enormous power, is
supposed to be built over the next nine years, the independent Russian military
commentator continues (sprotyv.info/ru/news/kiev/rossiyskiy-ledokol-lider-obrechyon-na-raspil-eshche-v-utrobe).
And two Russian banks, VTB and
Sberbank, have said they are prepared to finance the construction of the ship
to the tune of 100 billion rubles (1.5 billion US dollars), he says, even
though they and the coverage of the plans ignore the fact that Russian yards have
not build any ship approaching that size in decades, let alone a high-tech atomic
icebreaker.
Their commitments are impressive
given that the Russian government has cut back spending on its much-ballyhooed
Arctic development program by more than 80 percent and given the failure of
Russian yards in the Far East where the ship is supposed to be built to produce
far smaller vessels on budget and on time.
Instead, those yards have been mired
in continuing scandals with money supposedly going for naval construction instead
being spent on the facilities themselves or ending up in the pockets of wealthy
Russian investors, Kovalenko continues.
For those reasons, he concludes, it
is unlikely that “The Leader” will ever be launched. It certainly will be
begun, but the money that is supposed to go for its construction is almost certain
to go elsewhere. And the ship itself is likely to be scrapped even before it
can be put to sea a decade from now.
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