In the US, the Russian 'Admiral Gorshkov' was dubbed a naphthalene ball 0 11

The aircraft carrier 'Admiral Gorshkov', sold by Russia to India, is a naphthalene ball. This is how Steve Balestrieri, a columnist for the American publication National Security Journal (NSJ), referred to the Soviet-built aircraft-carrying cruiser.

According to the author, New Delhi's purchase of the decommissioned Soviet aircraft carrier 'Admiral Gorshkov' of project 1143.4 from Moscow in 2004 was a 'grand mistake'. The columnist notes that the conversion of the ship into the Indian aircraft carrier Vikramaditya required over a billion dollars and was associated with numerous delays and cost overruns, resulting in India allegedly receiving a malfunctioning ship.

'India should have asked the most basic questions: how can one expect a shipyard that only produced submarines to repair an aircraft carrier that had been in preservation for ten years? They did not carry out this elementary check, and the results are not surprising,' the author writes.

The columnist noted that after modernization, 'Admiral Gorshkov' lost its air defense capabilities, which means that Vikramaditya requires support from a destroyer.