Kremlin’s Ship-Building Plans Face Serious Obstacles, Zavyadov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 9 – Pushed by Vladimir Putin and Nikolay Patrushev, Russian shipyards have announced plans to build more than 1700 ships between 2025 and 2037, something that is at least possible, Dmitry Savyadov says, but will require that the Russian government and Russian yards overcome some serious obstacles.
    The specialist on manufacturing and logistics at Moscow’s Plekhanov Economic University says to achieve that goal Russian yards will have to continue to increase the number of ships they launch. In 2022, these yards launched 55; in 2023, 108; and in 2024, 110 (profile.ru/economy/sudovaya-rol-perspektivy-razvitiya-grazhdanskogo-flota-rossii-1615186/).
    But growth over the last three years, Savyadov continues, has been the result of massive infusions of government cash and has not overcome the impact of Western sanctions which mean that the electronic innards of the ships these yards are producing are far behind what Western yards are launching.
    In Soviet times, the USSR had the largest fleet in the world; but that figure has now fallen to less than half; and in the last decades of Soviet power and the first of Russian, shipbuilding in the country didn’t develop and more than two-thirds of the ships delivered to the navy and merchant marine had been built abroad.
    Much has been said, Savyardov says, about the fact that Russian yards are hemmed in because they cannot get electronics and other equipment abroad because of sanctions. But other problems, including corruption and especially the inability of Russian yards to build ships on an assembly-line basis as yards abroad do may reduce the chance they will fulfill Kremlin orders.