In a Ragtag Show of Force, Russian Navy Visits Cuba (2024)

• A flotilla of Russian Navy ships crossed the Atlantic and is now visiting Cuba.
• The visit is a show of force meant to show that the Russian military is still a credible threat to the U.S.
• A closer look at the ships, however, suggests there is less to that threat than meets the eye.

A task force of four Russian Navy warships has crossed the Atlantic Ocean, sailing into Havana harbor as part of a state visit. This visit—the largest in several years—is a show of force to demonstrate Russia’s global reach. The task force’s makeup, however, hints that the Russian Navy has serious problems behind the scenes, including a lack of larger warships and reliability problems.

State Visit

The four ship task force departed the Kola Peninsula on May 17th, sailing across the Atlantic and arriving off the coast of Florida before entering Havana harbor. Cuba greeted the ships with a salute of cannon fire, and the ships passed fishermen and well-wishers. The warships will stay in Cuba from June 12-17 as part of “historically friendly relations” between the two countries, according to CNN.

The ships include the frigate Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, the guided missile submarine Kazan, the fleet tanker Pashin, and the tug Nikolai Chiker. The ships are part of the Northern Fleet, the largest of Russia’s four fleets. Two other fleets, the Baltic and the Black Sea Fleet, face North America. The Baltic Fleet is relatively small, and the Black Sea Fleet has taken heavy casualties in Russia’s war with Ukraine—they’ve lost ten warships, including a cruiser and a submarine, and another six have been damaged.

During the approach to Cuba, the ships sailed within the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone, or EEZ. EEZs are internationally recognized zones belonging to countries with maritime borders. The country is able to regulate economic activity in the zone—by, for example, keeping foreign fishing boats or oil rigs out—but in other respects, the regions are treated as international waters. Foreign warships can travel in and out of EEZs freely.

Unusual Makeup

Admiral Gorshkov is a Project 22350 frigate. Commissioned in 2018, Gorshkov is the lead ship of its class and one of the first Russian Navy post-Cold War designs. Construction began in 2006, but due to financial troubles, it wasn’t completed until 2018. The ship displaces 5,400 tons fully loaded, and is equipped with one 130mm rapid fire gun, 16 vertical launch missile silos (for land attack and anti-ship missiles), 32 vertical launch silos (for Redut medium range surface to air missiles), two Palash close-in weapon systems (similar to the American Phalanx), eight anti-submarine torpedo tubes, and one Kamov Ka-27 helicopter.

Gorshkov is technically a general purpose frigate, capable of a variety of roles that include anti-surface warfare and anti-submarine warfare. A lack of long range surface to air missiles makes it marginally useful for defending other ships—such as cruisers or aircraft carriers—or ships in convoys. It is much better armed than its U.S. Navy counterparts, the Freedom and Independence-class littoral combat ships. One notable feature is the ability to carry Zircon scramjet-powered hypersonic anti-surface missiles.

Kazan (top) is a Yasen, or Project 855 guided missile submarine. The Yasen class is considered one of the most capable classes of submarines in the world. Kazan is 393 feet long, displaces 11,800 tons, and (thanks to its OK-650KPM pressurized-water nuclear reactor) can achieve speeds up to 31 knots submerged. Like all submarines, it is also equipped with torpedo tubes—in this case, ten tubes. Each of those tubes is armed with UGST-M heavyweight guided torpedoes, which are capable weapons against surface ships or other submarines.

The Project 855 submarines are designed to carry a large number of cruise missiles—specifically, the Oniks anti-ship and Kalibr land attack cruise missiles. Oniks, traveling at Mach 2.5, would be a real challenge for the surface-to-air missile defenses of enemy warships to shoot down. Kazan can also carry 32 Kalibr cruise missiles, which can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads. This triggered concerns in the U.S. government that Kazan and its sister ships could launch a decapitation strike against Washington D.C. and other strategic targets, their low-altitude flight profile evading detection until it was too late.

Pashin, or Akademik Pashin, is a fleet oiler designed to replenish other ships at sea. Pashin, commissioned in 2020, is the newest ship in the flotilla. It displaces 14,000 tons fully loaded with 9,000 tons of diesel fuel and is unarmed.

The seagoing rescue tugboat Nikolai Chiker is one of the hardest working ships in the Russian Navy. At 7,542 tons, it’s a large tugboat, and accompanies Russian warships on long voyages overseas. This is not a normal procedure in blue water (ocean-going) navies—the U.S. Navy, Japanese Navy, and even the Chinese Navy do not send rescue tugboats on operational deployments. In 2015, Chiker took the carrier Admiral Kuznetsov under tow in the Bay of Biscay, apparently after the big carrier had broken down.

The Russian naval force has not gone unnoticed. The U.S. destroyers Truxton and Donald Cook shadowed the ships as they passed the East Coast, with P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft flying overhead. The Coast Guard Cutter Stone is also keeping tabs on the ship, as is the Canadian frigate HMCS Ville de Quebec.

The combination of ships in this naval grouping is unusual for such a high profile trip. Frigates would typically be the smaller surface ships in the group, and submarines often make their own, solitary port visits. There’s nothing unusual about Pashin’s inclusion, but Chiker’s presence suggests concern in Russia that one or more of the ships is at risk of breaking down. It’s also a weak task force—a visit of Russian warships sunk and damaged in the invasion of Ukraine (which has no navy) would be arguably more capable than this one. But as Russia’s Navy continues to shrink, or sink, we may remember this flotilla as one of the larger ones.