Russia's flotilla flop-Moscow wanted to impress the world, but mostly we just laughed

[flamer84]

Russia’s great flotilla of eight naval ships to the eastern Mediterranean hasn’t been the public diplomacy coup Moscow hoped for.

NATO calls the flotilla “the largest surface deployment since the end of the Cold War,” but most people in Russia or in the West who know anything about it have probably only seen the photos of the Admiral Kuznetsov — Russia’s only aircraft carrier — billowing smoke on the open water.

You might be surprised to learn that the Kuznetsov hasn’t broken down: the smoke is normal for the 30-year-old ship, which runs on diesel fuel. That ominous plume of black smoke rising up from the flight control tower? The Russian military expected you to see that.

What Moscow apparently failed to anticipate is the ridicule such ancient-seeming technology would invite in cyberspace, where the Kremlin’s opponents and nervous foreign observers have seized the images as proof of Russian military decline, despite the ongoing intervention in Syria.

On Twitter some of Vladimir Putin's most popular critics have had a field day with the publicity backlash. With a touch of photoshop, for instance, Ilya Repin's classic painting “Barge Haulers on the Volga” was transformed into a joke about the Kuznetsov. The caption below reads, “Russia in one picture.”

Anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, who nearly forced a runoff mayoral election in Moscow in 2013, pointed out that some Russian news media were sharing photographs of U.S. naval vessels, while tweeting stories about the Russian flotilla. “The Putin regime spends a third of the federal budget on defense,” Navalny wrote, “but showing just a single photo of our own aircraft carrier is so embarrassing that we take photos from the U.S. Navy.”

 

[flamer84]

The pro-Ukrainian political cartoonist “Night Separator” mixed the iconic image of Vladimir Putin's breaststroke with the Kuznetsov's plume of smoke. “The smoke is coming from right where you think it is,” he clarified in a follow-up tweet.

Rhetoric about the Admiral Kuznetsov's trail of smoke has taken on such epic proportions that some of the most popular jokes about the ship compare its engine exhaust to the stuff of natural disasters. “The Admiral Kuznetsov pictured off the coast of Iceland in 1987,” claims one spoof tweet, accompanied by a photograph of Iceland's Katla volcano.

Other Twitter accounts left followers wondering if the image before them was real or edited. “Photo-fact!” wrote one popular anti-Kremlin parody account. “The Admiral Kuznetsov depicted from a passing passenger plane. It's sailing to Syria completely unnoticed!” In fact, the image is actually a modified photo of the Deepwater Horizon cleanup effort in the Gulf of Mexico.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cvj31shWcAEjTa5.jpg:large

Another popular joke, recycled dozens of times by different Twitter users, claimed that NASA had published a photo from an orbiting satellite, showing the smoke trail of the Kuznetsov as it crossed the English Channel. (In reality, the edited photo below was taken originally in 2002 from the International Space Station over Italy's Mount Etna, one of the most active volcanoes in the world.)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CvahcMSWcAAORzu.jpg:large

Others are already looking ahead to Syria, which Russia's flotilla will reach eventually. “Seeing signs that the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov approaches, militants abandon their positions in terror,” jokes the tweet below.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CvYauH3WIAAHzzh.jpg:large

The mockery of Russia's flagship naval vessel has become so irksome to some in Moscow that the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper even commissioned blogger Sergei Leleka to pen a column titled “Why the Admiral Kuznetsov Blackens Europe's Sky.” In the text, Leleka claims that the ship only produces black smoke “as a tradition,” arguing that there's nothing wrong or outdated about the engine exhaust. “This is a signal,” he says, “as if to tell everyone, ‘I've arrived, hello!’ or ‘I am leaving, goodbye!’ or ‘I'm on my way!’”
Leleka says the smoke can be used as a friendly signal to allies, communicating that help is on the way, or as a menacing gesture to foes, warning that Russia's naval might is en route.

In his column, before the newspaper quickly redacted the text, Leleka also unleashed a savage anti-Semitic attack against prominent Russian liberal intellectuals Anton Nossik and Sergei Parkhomenko, who have publicly ridiculed the Admiral Kuznetsov. In an awkward and angry reference to the Holocaust, Leleka wrote that Nossik and Parkhomenko could only be cured of their sudden military expertise “in the gas chamber.”

The remark resembles a similar anti-Semitic comment published in the same newspaper in 2013, when another columnist lamented that the Nazis failed to “make lampshades” of the grandfathers of today's anti-Kremlin oppositionists.

https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/flotilla-kuznetsov-syria-russia-smoke-55855

 

[waz]

That poor carrier. I was about to use my AA vehicle breakdown membership just in case it just stopped dead in the water.

 

[barbarosa]

I think Russia is rising after 26 years once again.

 

[BlackOpsIndia]

Lol, the PR stunt that turned into mockery

 

[oFFbEAT]

Their Aircraft carrier may be old but not their aircrafts.....

 

[艹艹艹]

Which one do you like?

 

[ptldM3]

And yet no one would dare touch the flotilla which consists of a battle cruiser that has more firepower then the entire Romanian military



When western threats and redlines failed they started to attack Russia on a petty level. As for the carrier it will undergo a 2-3 year upgrade program, as for the rest of the Russian armed forces, they have acquired more modern military equipment in the past 5 years then any NATO member besides possibly the US.

 

[waz]

I'm going to start a conspiracy theory that it was the Kuznetsov, not Icelandic volcanos screwing up European airspace .

Seems like something the Russians would do anyway.

Lol.

 

[A.P. Richelieu]

And yet no one would dare touch the flotilla which consists of a battle cruiser that has more firepower then the entire Romanian military



When western threats and redlines failed they started to attack Russia on a petty level. As for the carrier it will undergo a 2-3 year upgrade program, as for the rest of the Russian armed forces, they have acquired more modern military equipment in the past 5 years then any NATO member besides possibly the US.

Why would anyone touch a flotilla of Navy Ships acting according to International Laws?

 

[ptldM3]

Why would anyone touch a flotilla of Navy Ships acting according to International Laws?

Since when did the west follow international laws? Why would anyone attack Iraq in 2003? We have had threats of no fly zones in Syria which means that Russian aircraft and ships would be attacked.

 

[A_Poster]

And yet no one would dare touch the flotilla which consists of a battle cruiser that has more firepower then the entire Romanian military



When western threats and redlines failed they started to attack Russia on a petty level. As for the carrier it will undergo a 2-3 year upgrade program, as for the rest of the Russian armed forces, they have acquired more modern military equipment in the past 5 years then any NATO member besides possibly the US.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.- Mahatma Gandhi


Granted that Russian carrier is old , a smoke belcher, and prone to mechanical failure; but its carrier group still has capability to singlehandedly sink navies of most countries that are ridiculing this carrier.

This ridicule smacks of pettiness, and its parallel are seen in complementary and predictable bitching about facilities by western media before start of any international sports event in a third world country. It is like their disgust floats to surface like turds in toilet bowl. The bashing of this carrier is a similar mixture of disgust mixed with jealousy.

 

[A.P. Richelieu]

Since when did the west follow international laws? Why would anyone attack Iraq in 2003? We have had threats of no fly zones in Syria which means that Russian aircraft and ships would be attacked.

If you attack purely civilian targets, then certainly it is the duty of civilized people to protect them.
If You guys and Assad stops committing genocide, there is less problems.
Start another thread if you want to discuss Iraq 2003.

 

[T-123456]

That poor carrier. I was about to use my AA vehicle breakdown membership just in case it just stopped dead in the water.

Does it do its job Brit?
Shall we talk about your English breakfast?

 

[Thəorətic Muslim]

European countries can laugh at it all they want.

But the facts are the mightiest of the world's navy has no AC, and their helicopter carrier will be phased out because they don't have enough ships to protect it and the 2 additional Queen Elizabeth ACs being finalized.

Other carriers in NATO, Spanish(decommissioned) & Italian's 8 Harrier capability pale to this accident prone AC.

This battle group has as much firepower as entire navies in Europe.