Soviet aircraft carrier failed Chinese tourist attraction on fire (Updated)

A major fire has broken out in the former Soviet building, which may still be ongoing. Kiev class aircraft carrier Minskwhich has been rotting for years in a man-made lagoon near a section of the Yangtze River in China. The war zone I previously delved into the saga of how the flattop came to be anchored there in an article that you can find here.

The cause of the fire and MinskThe current status is unknown. Local authorities say the fire broke out around 4 p.m. local time, that there were no casualties and that the incident is under investigation, according to Chinese media.

Photos and video footage have surfaced online showing a large fire.

Fires aboard even well-maintained ships can easily become disastrous, especially when they are undergoing maintenance and only a skeleton crew is on watch. A good example of this is the fire that raged for days aboard the US Navy's Wasp class amphibious assault ship USS Good morning Richard in 2020, which ultimately made the ship a total loss. What remains of Minsk has not been maintained in good condition in any way, which could have led to increased risks.

Minsk was commissioned into the Soviet Navy in 1978. The Kiev class as a whole was an odd one out among warships, with the 40,000-ton displacement ships looking more like a cross between an aircraft carrier and a battlecruiser than a traditional flat-top, as you can read more about here.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian Navy inherited the ships, but quickly found them difficult and expensive to maintain. In 1993, the Minsksister ship of 's New Russia in particular a large fire in the engine room.

Three out of four Kiev class aircraft carriers were eventually sold, with Minsk And New Russia initially bound for a shipbreaking yard in South Korea. Admiral Gorshkov (originally called Baku) was sold to India in 2004 and became the subject of its own saga before finally entering service with that country in 2013 as the INS Vikramaditya.

New Russia was eventually scrapped in South Korea, but local protests led to Minsk sold to a Chinese company to be demolished. A group of Chinese entrepreneurs then rescued the ex-Minsk of the torch. The ship, with a mix of retired Soviet designs and Chinese fighter planes on its deck, became the centerpiece of a theme park called Minsk World that opened in 2000. Minsk World went bankrupt in 2006, and the Chinese government eventually reclaimed the land it stood on.

In the late 2010s, Minskwhich was already in increasingly poor condition, was moved to where it now lies, some 50 miles northwest of the Chinese city of Shanghai. Plans to create a new Minsk World never came to fruition and the increasingly dilapidated ship became a destination for so-called 'urban explorers' to sneak aboard, as seen in the video below.

There are reports that authorities in the nearby city of Nantong announced plans in January to renovate the ship and convert it into a “national defense scientific training center.”

It is interesting to note that former Kiev is also in China, where it has become a separate tourist attraction at the Binhai Aircraft Park in Tianjin, China, about 100 miles southeast of Beijing. In 2011, the company that owns Binhai announced plans to sell the carrier, which has been much better maintained than Minskin a floating luxury hotel.

The extent of the damage that former Minsk has suffered now remains to be seen. It is unfortunately possible that the already very sad story of the ship will now finally come to an inglorious end.

UPDATE:

The fire appears to have been extinguished, but the island's superstructure has been destroyed:

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