How the Admiral Kuznetsov Went North

At about nine in the evening on 1 December 1991, Vice-Admiral Yury Ustimenko, First Deputy Commander of the Northern Fleet, came aboard the heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser "Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Kuznetsov" in Sevastopol. He ordered the ship's captain, Viktor Yarygin, to weigh anchor and set a course for the North. That same day Ukraine was voting in a referendum on independence.

The ship had been built in Nikolayev, and in eight years it had gone through four names: "Riga", "Leonid Brezhnev", "Tbilisi" and "Admiral Kuznetsov". It was called a cruiser out of caution, since the 1936 Montreux Convention forbids aircraft carriers to pass through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles.

In the summer of 1991 Ukraine brought under its authority all military units on its territory, and Kyiv took an interest in the only aircraft carrier of the post-Soviet space, even though the ship was on the books of the Northern Fleet. Between 1 and 24 December the cruiser sailed round Europe and arrived at Vidyayevo. The authors in Nikolayev still insist that the passage had been planned in advance, and that the legend of a flight by night was invented by the newspapers.

The pilots of the 100th Fighter Aviation Regiment, together with their commander Timur Apakidze, refused in 1992 to swear an oath to Ukraine and likewise went North. The sister ship "Varyag" remained in Nikolayev unfinished: Ukraine sold the hull to a Chinese company that promised to turn it into a floating casino, and in 2012 the ship entered the Chinese navy under the name "Liaoning".

On 17 September the series "Fighters" was released, filmed by "Studio Chekhov" with the support of the Internet Development Institute (ANO "IRI"). The screenwriters drew on archival documents, newsreels and eyewitness recollections. A young pilot, Sergey Denisov, is about to marry his childhood friend Liza, but her father takes Ukraine's side, and Sergey has to choose between his bride and the comrades who are taking the cruiser North.

The director Vladimir Shchegolkov ("Dear Willy") wanted to show people who "only yesterday used to pop round to one another for sugar, and today have become sworn enemies". The leading roles went to Andrey Merzlikin, Sergey Marin, Kirill Rusin and Margarita Dyachenkova. Some of the scenes were shot aboard the actual cruiser and at a military airfield with real fighters.