Summary and Key Points: Russia's geography and historical focus on land power have limited its need for aircraft carriers. Despite efforts in the Soviet era to develop such vessels, logistical and geographical constraints made it impractical.

-The Russian Navy's priorities shifted to submarines and smaller surface ships. Attempts to build carriers, such as the Kiev-class and the uncompleted Ulyanovsk, were abandoned or sold post-Soviet Union collapse.

-Current geopolitical realities and the war in Ukraine further highlight the limited strategic utility of carriers for Russia, which lacks suitable bases and faces immediate threats in its key naval regions.

A question routinely asked by armchair historians is why Russia never built a fleet of aircraft carriers. The short answer only requires that one looks at a map.

Russia may be the largest nation in terms of land mass in the world today, and historically was even larger in the Imperial Russia and Soviet eras, but it has also largely been a land power.

Its naval history has been one of numerous follies, from the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) when it lost two squadrons including eight battleships sunk and two more capture; to the ongoing war in Ukraine, which last year saw the sinking of the Moskva, the largest warship sunk in combat since the Second World War.

Following the destruction of the Russian Navy in the Russo-Japanese War, the naval power of Russia was vastly reduced – so much so that it fell from the second-largest navy in the world to the fourth. Yet, Tsar Nicholas II saw a need for a naval force and launched a massive shipbuilding program.

The First World War broke out........

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