Russia has launched a grandiose program to upgrade the key mode of transport in the current conditions – the merchant marine fleet. What vessels are required by our country first of all, why is it so important today and what routes will the new ships serve?
"Russia does not see itself without a powerful fleet. We must have a strong shipbuilding industry. To do this, our shipyards will have to carry out deep localization of production for all types of vessels, from nuclear icebreakers, gas carriers, tankers and container ships to small river trams. The same task applies to ship repair," Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said recently. The Prime Minister noted that "a program has been developed for the development of its own diesel industry – to equip the sea and river fleet with power plants. Its implementation will ensure all internal needs for low- and high-speed engines."
It seems paradoxical, but in the context of the aggravation of the geopolitical conflict, Russian shipbuilding will have to increase the relative output of not military, but primarily civilian products. Without reducing, of course, the pace of construction of warships.
Thus, the very strategy of creating a Russian civil fleet is changing before our eyes. Until recently, the logic of Russian shipbuilding was based on plans to follow global trends and find their own market niche in which Russian enterprises would have competitive advantages. But now the need to solve urgent tasks to ensure Russian exports in the face of sanctions is at the forefront. The primary tasks for shipbuilding are import substitution and the rapid acquisition of competencies necessary to accelerate the construction of the necessary range of ships and vessels.
Changing naval priorities
Until now, one of the features of Russian shipbuilding has been its predominantly defensive orientation. In recent years, military products accounted for up to 90% of the commercial output of enterprises. Russia occupied approximately 12% of the global military shipbuilding market and was in second place after the United States in this indicator.
This is if we talk about export supplies, and not about the construction of ships for our own fleet – China is the leader here today, the United States is in second place, and Russia is in third place, and that's thanks to nuclear submarines. The construction of surface ships is still somewhat lagging behind. Moreover, until recently, ships of the near sea zone – corvettes, small rocket ships and boats - were in the lead in Russian military shipbuilding.
Now priorities will be reviewed. How they will be formulated by the Ministry of Defense depends on the development of the geopolitical situation. And not only from the shipbuilding programs of our geopolitical rivals, but also from the emergence of new tasks facing the Russian fleet.
So, it was decided to abandon the serial production of the invisible rocket corvettes of project 20386. The lead corvette "Daring" will be rebuilt, and later the ship will join the Navy in a "fundamentally new and more balanced appearance."
Experts say that the main reason for the rejection of the project was the experience of its own: the importance of not only the offensive weapons of the ship, but the presence of detection systems and short-range rapid-fire defensive weapons capable of repelling attacks by cruise missiles, surface and aerial drones was revealed. Most likely, before the development of new projects, a decision will be made on the construction of additional ships of the far zone – frigates of the 22350 Admiral Gorshkov project.
Expansion of bottlenecks on ship equipment
At the same time, we will have to take into account the limitations imposed by the capabilities of the industry. One of the main ones is the dependence on foreign ship component equipment (SKO), in large part – Western.
Due to anti-Russian sanctions in 2022, there was an acute problem with its import substitution. We even had to redesign many vessels to replace imported components. This led to an increase in the cost of building ships and postponements of their delivery dates, as well as to a deterioration in the financial and economic indicators of shipyards.
The federal authorities have taken care of providing shipbuilders with the necessary ship components. The bet is made on creating conditions for accelerating the pace of import substitution. Back in 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Trade identified the most critical positions of ship equipment to be replaced as a priority. A mechanism for providing subsidies for the implementation of projects for the development and production of such equipment was launched.
"As a result of the implementation of complex projects, new types of critically important marine equipment will be presented on the domestic market starting from 2025-2026," Viktor Yevtukhov, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade, said at a meeting of the Maritime Board in May this year. For example, several Russian enterprises already produce medium-speed and high-speed engines of medium and low power.
Merchant Marine for a land Power
In 2022, Russia's need for sea vessels has increased dramatically. The reorientation of Russian raw material exports has dramatically increased the need for tankers, bulk carriers and gas carriers. At the same time, anti-Russian sanctions have led to the refusal of a number of transport companies to operate flights to and from Russian ports. This affected both the delivery time of imports and the need to expand the tanker fleet serving Russian exports.
Some of the problems were solved by buying or renting tankers with an already decent service life. It is still unclear how many of them are registered to shell companies, and actually belong to Russian shipowners, and how many are owned by carriers trying to make money by circumventing anti-Russian sanctions. CNN experts estimated the size of this fleet at about 600 vessels (or about 10% of the total number of all large tankers used in the world).
But it was a tactical decision. And in the long term, Russia faces the need to preserve opportunities for sea cargo transportation in any geopolitical scenario. And first of all with friendly countries.
"We are implementing large–scale plans to upgrade the civil fleet," Mikhail Mishustin said at the Innoprom exhibition in Yekaterinburg. "Now we are working on the issue of expanding the previously approved program, which provided for the construction of 260 vessels using the funds of the National Welfare Fund. By 2035, Russian shipyards plan to launch about a thousand vessels, including the river–sea class. And a separate big work is being done to create domestic equipment for them. Serial production of more than 60 of its types will be established over the next two years."
Sea routes and required vessels
The most important route for Russia is the Northern Sea Route. The target volume of cargo transportation of 220 million tons by 2035, which seemed overly optimistic two years earlier, looks even underestimated today. In April 2023, Vladimir Panov, Rosatom's special representative for Arctic development, confirmed that "... by 2035 we are already reaching 270 million tons." In total, the cargo turnover of seaports in the Arctic basin (and cargo, for example, is sent from Murmansk not only along the Northern Sea Route, but also to the Atlantic) increased by 4.4% in 2022 and reached 98.5 million tons.
To ensure year-round navigation along the Northern Sea Route, not only high Arctic class transport vessels are being built, but also nuclear and non-nuclear icebreakers. By 2030, there should be seven universal nuclear icebreakers of project 22220 in service (three have been built today – "Arctic", "Siberia" and "Ural"), one nuclear icebreaker of project 10521 "50 years of Victory" (introduced in 2007), one lead nuclear icebreaker "Russia" of project 10510 and four non-nuclear icebreakers.
There is an increase in sea cargo turnover in other directions as well. For example, a whole bunch of important sea routes starting in the Far East leads to trading partners in East and Southeast Asia. Cargo turnover of seaports there increased by 1.5% in 2022. At the same time, the transshipment of dry cargo increased by 3.5%, reaching 154 million tons (primarily due to the growth of coal exports). Cargo turnover of seaports of the Azov-Black Sea basin increased by 2.7% and reached 263.6 million tons.
Transshipment of dry cargo in the Caspian Sea increased by 21.3% and amounted to 3.2 million tons. However, the total cargo turnover of the seaports of the Caspian basin decreased by 13.9% and amounted to 6 million tons. The reduction is due to a drop in the transshipment of bulk cargo. Further prospects of this direction are connected with the development of the North–South transport corridor and the transport corridor from China through Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to Astrakhan and further through Russia to St. Petersburg.
Dmitry Skvortsov
