Baltic Fleet

As early as 1861, the first armor-clad ships were built for the Baltic Fleet. In 1863, during the American Civil War, most of the fleet's ocean-going ships, including the flagship Alexander Nevsky were sent to New York City. At the same time ten Uragan-class monitors based on the American-designed Passaic-class monitors were launched.

It was the policy of the Tsar and his government to show support for the Northern Union Army in the United States during their Civil War, observing and exchanging naval tactics and cooperation. In 1869, the fleet commissioned the first turret on a battleship in the world – Petr Veliky. Furthermore, in the second half of the 19th and early 20th Century a strong network of coastal artillery batteries was created to cover the approaches to St. Petersburg, Riga, and other important bases.

Sailors of the Baltic Fleet ashore at Nossi Bé, December 1904.

By 1900, decades of modernization on the Baltic as well as the Pacific Fleet made Russia the fourth strongest country in the world in terms of naval forces after the UK, France and Germany, ahead of the US and Japan.[4] The Baltic Fleet, re-organized into the Second Pacific Squadron (route around Africa) and the Third Pacific Squadron (Suez route, under the command of Admiral Nebogatov), took a prominent part in the Russo-Japanese War. After the defeat of earlier Siberian Military Flotilla vessels, in September 1904, the Second Squadron under the command of Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky was sent on a high-speed dash around South Africa.

They stopped in French, German and Portuguese colonial ports: Tangier in Morocco, Dakar in Senegal, Gabon, Baía dos Tigres, Lüderitz Bay, and Nossi Be (Madagascar). They then formed a single fleet under the command of Rozhestvensky with the Third Pacific Fleet, across the Indian Ocean to Cam Ranh Bay in French Indochina and then northward to its doomed encounter with the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Tsushima off the east coast of Korea in May, 1905, ending the Russo-Japanese War.

The Imperial German civilian passenger Hamburg-Amerika Line provided 60 colliers to supply the Baltic Fleet on its journey. During its passage through the North Sea the fleet mistook a fleet of British fishing boats for Japanese torpedo boats and opened fire, killing three sailors in what is known as the Dogger Bank incident.

The decision to send the fleet to the Pacific was made after Russia had suffered a string of naval defeats in the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan off the coast of China and Korea near its Far East naval base and colony, at the hands of the newly emergent Imperial Japanese Navy and Army in Manchuria. The one-sided outcome of the Tsushima naval battle broke Russian strength in East Asia. It set the stage for the uprising in the abortive Russian Revolution of 1905. That propelled the decline that would see the Romanov dynasty monarchy eventually brought down with the strains of World War I, in the Russian Revolutions of 1917.

The naval St. Nicholas Cathedral in St. Petersburg is the main church of the Russian Navy. Its outside is covered with plaques to Russian sailors/officers lost at sea.

Following the catastrophic losses in battleships during the Russo-Japanese War, Russia embarked on a new naval building program which was to incorporate a number of the most modern dreadnought-type battleships into the fleet along with other vessels and practices adopted from the Western navies. In late 1914, four dreadnoughts of the Gangut class entered service with the fleet: Gangut; Poltava; Petropavlovsk; and Sevastopol. Four more powerful battlecruisers of the Borodino class were under construction, but were never completed. On the whole the heavy units of the fleet remained in port during the war, as the Imperial German Navy's superiority in battleships and other vessels was overwhelming and it was difficult to communicate with Great Britain's Royal Navy forces further west in the North Sea even though they had the Germans bottled up after the Battle of Jutland in 1916.

The Imperial Russian Navy's Baltic Fleet included a submarine division that had about 30 submarines of several classes and various auxiliary vessels, the largest of which were the transport and mother ships Europa, Tosno, Khabarovsk, Oland and Svjatitel Nikolai.[5][6] Some of the fleet's 355-ton submarines were made by Electric Boat Company of Groton, Connecticut in the United States, main supplier and builder of subs for the U.S. Navy. Five of these "AG (Holland)" class submarines were prefabricated by the British Pacific Engineering & Construction Company at Barnet (near Vancouver), in Canada's British Columbia, also under contract to the Electric Boat Company. These Canadian-built subs were shipped to Russia, a fellow Ally in the First World War in December 1915.,[7][8]

Four of these submarines, AG 11, AG 12, AG 15 and AG 16 were scuttled in the harbour of Hanko on 3 April 1918, just before the 10,000-strong Imperial German Baltic Sea Division landed in support of the "Whites" forces in the little known Finnish Civil War. During the war the fleet was aided by a detachment of British Royal Navy submarines. These subs were later scuttled by their crews near the Harmaja lighthouse outside Helsinki, Finland, on 4 April 1918.[9]

During the October Revolution the sailors of the Baltic Fleet (renamed "Naval Forces of the Baltic Sea" in March 1918)[10] were among the most ardent supporters of Bolsheviks, and formed an elite among Red military forces. The fleet was forced to evacuate several of its bases after Russia's withdrawal from the First World War, under the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The "Ice Cruise" of the Baltic Fleet (1918), led by Alexey Schastny, saw the evacuation of most of the fleet's ships to Kronstadt and Petrograd.

Some ships of the fleet took part in the Russian Civil War, notably by clashing with the British navy operating in the Baltic as part of intervention forces.[11] Over the years, however, the relations of the Baltic Fleet sailors with the Bolshevik regime soured, and they eventually rebelled against the Soviet government in the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921, but were defeated, and the fleet de facto ceased to exist as an active military unit.

The fleet, renamed the Red-Banner Baltic Fleet on 11 January 1935,[10] was developed further during the Soviet years, initially relying on tsarist warships, but adding modern units built in Soviet yards from the 1930s onwards. Among the fleet's Soviet commanders were Gordey Levchenko in 1938–39 and Arseniy Golovko in 1952–56. Ships and submarines commissioned to the fleet included Soviet submarine M-256, a Project 615 short-range attack diesel submarine of the Soviet Navy. The fleet also acquired a large number of ground-based aircraft to form a strong naval aviation force.

In September 1939, the fleet threatened the Baltic states as part of a series of military actions staged to encourage the Baltics to accept Soviet offers of "mutual assistance."[12][13] Subsequently, in June 1940, the fleet blockaded the Baltics in support of the Soviet invasion.

Finland, which had refused to sign a "pact of mutual assistance", was attacked by the USSR. The fleet played a limited role in the Winter War with Finland in 1939–1940, mostly through conducting artillery bombardments of Finnish coastal fortifications. Many fleet aircraft were involved in operations against Finland, however. Its operations came to a close with the freezing of the Gulf of Finland during the exceptionally cold winter of that year.

In the beginning of the German invasion the Baltic Fleet had 2 battleships (both of World War I vintage), 2 cruisers, 2 flotilla leaders, 19 destroyers, 48 MTBs, 65 submarines and other ships, and 656 aircraft. During the war, the fleet, commanded by the Vice-Admiral Vladimir Tributz, defended the Hanko Peninsula, Tallinn, several islands in Estonian SSR, and participated in the breakthrough breach of the Siege of Leningrad. 137 sailors of the Baltic Fleet were awarded a title of the Hero of the Soviet Union.

For most of the war the fleet was trapped by German and Finnish minefields in Leningrad and nearby Kronstadt, the only bases left in Soviet hands on the Baltic coast. Another key factor was that the Finns had recaptured outer islands of the Gulf of Finland, Suursaari being the most important of them. Many of the fleet sailors fought on land as infantry during the siege.

Only submarines could risk the passage into the open sea to strike at German shipping. They were particularly successful towards the end of the war, sinking ships like Wilhelm Gustloff, Steuben and Goya, causing great loss of life.

The fleet carried out the Soviet evacuation of Tallinn in late August 1941.

• Battleship squadron/division
  • battleship Marat (named after Jean-Paul Marat)
  • battleship Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya (named after October revolution)
  • destroyer leader Leningrad (named after the city of Leningrad)
  • destroyer leader Minsk (named after the capital of Belarus)
• 1st destroyer division/1 Flotilla
  • cruiser Kirov
  • destroyer Gnevny
  • destroyer Gordyy
  • destroyer Grozyashchiy
  • destroyer Smetlivyi
  • destroyer Steregushchy
• 2nd destroyer division/2 Flotilla
  • Serdity
  • Silnyi
  • Stoikiy
  • Storozhevoy
• 3rd destroyer division/3 Flotilla
  • Karl Marx
  • Volodarsky
  • Lenin
  • Yakov Sverdlov
  • Artiom
  • Engels
  • Kalinin
• Guards division/Naval Guards Squadron
  • Burya
  • Sneg
  • Taifun
  • Tsiklon
  • Tucha
  • Vihr
• Minesweeper Division/Task Group
  • Minelayer Marti
  • Minesweepers T-201, T-202, T-203, T-204, T-205, T-206, T-207, T-208, T-209, T-210, T-211, T-212, T-213, T-214, T-215, T-216, T-217 and T-218
  • 15 auxiliary minesweepers
• 1st submarine brigade/1 Submarine Battle Fleet
  • S-1, S-3, S-4, S-5, S-6, S-7, S-8, S-9, S-10, S-101, S-102, L3, M-71, M-77, M-78, M-79, M-80, M-81, M-83, ex-Estonian submarine Lembit, ex-Estonian submarine Kalev, ex-Latvian submarine Ronis, ex-Latvian submarine Spidola
• 2nd submarine brigade/2 Submarine Battle Fleet
  • Shch-309, Shch-310, Shch-311, Shch-317, Shch-318, Shch-319, Shch-320, Shch-322, Shch-323, Shch-324, M-90, M-94, M-95, M-96, M-97, M-98, M-99, M-102, M-103
• Support vessels
  • transport Eestirand (VT 532)
  • Oka (named after the river of Oka)
  • Polyarnaya Zvezda (Polar Star)
• Training Task Group/Division of the Navy
  • M-72, M-73, M-74, M-75, M-76, Shch-303, Shch-304, K-3, K-21, K-22, K-23, L-1, L-2, S-11, S-12, Shch-405, Shch-406
• Training Task Group
  • Shch-301, Shch-302, Shch-305, Shch-306, Shch-307, Shch-308, P-1, P-2, P-3[14]

During the Immediate post-war period the importance of the Red-Banner Baltic Fleet increased despite the Baltic being a shallow sea with the exits easily becoming choke points by other countries. The Baltic Fleet was increased to two Fleets, the 4th Red-Banner Baltic Fleet and the 8th Red-Banner Baltic Fleet on 15 February 1946. However, during the post-Stalinist period and general reforms and downsizing in the Soviet Armed Forces the two fleets of the Baltic were again reduced, with many vessels, some built before the Revolution, were scrapped, and the fleet was again renamed Red-Banner Baltic Fleet on 24 December 1955.[10]

In Liepāja the Baltic Fleet's 14th submarine squadron, call sign "Kompleks" ("Комплекс") was stationed with 16 submarines (613, 629a, 651); as was the 6th group of rear supply of Baltic Fleet, and the 81st design bureau and reserve command center of the same force.

Far from being reduced in importance, operations of the Red-Banner Baltic Fleet during the early-Cold War period earned it a great amount of prestige and profile, with the second awarding of the Order of Red Banner being presented on 7 May 1965 when the fleet was again renamed to Twice Red-Banner Baltic Fleet.[10] Although the Soviet Union poured resources into building up the Northern Fleet and the Pacific Fleet, both of which had easy access to the open ocean, the Twice Red-Banner Baltic Fleet assumed the very important position of supporting the northern flank of the European Theatre in case of a confrontation with NATO.

This role was under-rated from the blue water navies perspective, but was seen as a highly valuable one from the strategic perspective of the Soviet General Staff planning. The Twice Red-Banner Baltic Fleet remained a powerful force, which in the event of war was tasked with conducting amphibious assaults against the coast of Denmark and Germany, in cooperation with allied Polish and East German naval forces.

A notable incident involving the fleet occurred in 1975 when a mutiny broke out on the frigate Storozhevoy. There were also numerous allegations by Sweden of Baltic Fleet submarines illegally penetrating its territorial waters. In October 1981 the Soviet Whiskey-class submarine U 137 ran aground in Swedish territorial waters, near the important naval base of Karlskrona, causing a serious diplomatic incident. Swedish naval vessels pulled the submarine into deeper water and permitted it to return to the Soviet fleet in early November.[15]

7th Guards Ind. Motor Rifle Rgt

336th Guards Naval Infantry Bde

18th Guards Motor Rifle Div

Polish 9th Armd Cav Bde

Polish 15th Mech Bde

Ground Combat formations of the Baltic Fleet and nearby Polish Army formations
18th Guards Motor Rifle Division reportedly fields 10 Motor Rifle Battalions[31]
Another brigade of the Polish 16th Mech Division is to the east of the 15th Mech Bde

12th Surface ship Division

• 128th Surface ship Brigade[32] (128-я бригада надводных кораблей)
  • Nastoychivyy (610) (Sovremenny-class destroyer) (1992) (Baltic fleet flagship; reported under repair as of 2019[28])
  • Neustrashimyy (Neustrashimyy-class frigate) (Entered service 1993) (Rejoining the fleet in April 2022 pursuant to repairs[33][34] which were completed as of December 2021[35][36])
  • Yaroslav Mudryy (Neustrashimyy-class frigate) (Entered service 2009; active as of 2022)[37]
  • Steregushchiy (530) (Steregushchy-class multi-role corvette) (entered service in 2007)
  • Soobrazitelnyy (531) (Steregushchy-class multi-role corvette) (active as of 2022)[38]
  • Boikiy (532) (Steregushchy-class multi-role corvette) (entered service May 2013)[39] (active as of 2022)[40][41]
  • Stoikiy (545) (Steregushchy-class multi-role corvette) (2014) (active as of 2022)[38][42]
• 71st Red Star Landing Ship Brigade (Baltiysk)
  • Minsk (122) (Ropucha class LST) (active as of 2022; deployed to the Black Sea and participating in invasion of Ukraine)[43][44][45][46][47]
  • Kaliningrad (102) (Ropucha class LST) (active as of 2022; deployed to the Black Sea and participating in the invasion of Ukraine)[43][44][45][47][48]
  • Aleksandr Shabalin (110) (Ropucha class LST)
  • Korolev (130) (Ropucha class LST) (active as of 2022; deployed to the Black Sea and participating in the invasion of Ukraine)[43][44][45][46][47][48]
  • Evgeniy Kocheshkov (770) (Zubr-class LCAC) (active; refit completed 2021)[49]
  • Mordoviya (782) (Zubr-class LCAC) (active as of 2021)[49][50]
• Other Landing Craft
  • 3 Dyugon-class landing craft
  • 2 Ondatra-class landing craft
  • 1 Serna-class landing craft
  • 2 BK-16-class (Project 02510) high-speed assault boats (entered service 2021)[51]

Leningrad Naval Base

• 123rd Submarine Brigade
  • 1 Kilo-class submarine (Dmitrov reported assigned to the Baltic Fleet as of 2020;[28][52] active as of 2021[53])
• 105th Naval Region Protection Brigade[18]
  • 144th Tactical Group (Kronshtadt) ex 109th ASW ships div
    • 308 MPK 99 Zelenodolsk (Parchim-class corvette)
    • 304 MPK 192 Urengoy (Parchim-class corvette) (active as of 2022)[37][54]
    • 311 MPK 205 Kazanets (Parchim-class corvette active as of 2022)[37][54]
  • 145th Tactical Group (Kronshtadt) ex-22nd Red Banner Minesweeper Battalion
    • Pavel Khenov (former BT 115) (561) (Sonya-class minesweeper) (active as of 2021)[54]
    • PDKA 89 PDKA 910 firefighting boats[55]
  • 2 Lida-class inshore minesweepers (RT-57 and 248 - reported active as of 2021)[54][56]
  • Project 97 Icebreaker: Buran[57] (active as of 2022)[58]

Baltyysk Naval Base (Kaliningrad)

• 64th Maritime Region Protection Brigade
  • 146th Tactical Group (former 264th Anti-submarine Warfare Battalion, Project 1331)
    • 218 MPK-224 Aleksin (Parchim-class corvette); active as of 2022[59][60]
    • 243 MPK-227 Kabardino-Balkaria (Parchim-class corvette); active as of 2022[60][61]
    • 232 MPK-229 Kalmykiya (Parchim-class corvette)
  • 147th, 148th Tactical Groups (former 323rd Minesweeper Division)
    • 3 Sonya-class minesweepers (Sergey Kolbasev (former BT-213), Novocheboksarsk (former BT-212 - active as of 2022) and Leonid Sobolev (former BT-230 - active as of 2022)[62][61])[63]
• 3 Lida-class inshore minesweepers (Vasily Polyakov - former RT-252 - Leonid Perepech - former RT-231 -, Victor Sigalov - former RT-273 - latter two both active as of 2022)[64][56][65]
• 1 Alexandrit-class seagoing minesweeper
  • "Alexander Obukhov" (507)[66] (active as of 2022)[61]
• 36th Red Banner Order of Nakhimov Missile Ship Brigade[67]
  • 2+1 Buyan-M-class missile ships (assigned to the Kaliningrad region as of 2016[68][69])
    • "Serpukhov"
    • "Zelenyy Dol" (active as of 2022)[70][61]
    • Grad (sea trials as of October 2022)[71]
  • 1st Guards Missile Boat Battalion
    • Karakurt-class small missile ships (corvettes)[72][73]
      • "Mytishchi" (active as of 2022)[74][70]
      • "Sovetsk" (active)[75]
      • "Odintsovo" (active as of 2022)[74][70]
  • 106th Small Missile Ship Battalion – attached from 1 June 1994. (Project 1234)
    • Liven (551) (Nanuchka-class corvette)
    • Geyzer (555) (Nanuchka-class corvette)
    • Zyb (560) (Nanuchka-class corvette)
    • Passat (570) (Nanuchka-class corvette) (active as of 2022)[70][61]
  • 6 Tarantul-class corvettes (reported based in Kaliningrad region as of 2018;[76] six units reported as of 2019[77])
    • 2 Project 12411T Molnaya (Tarantul II) vessels (Kuznetsk and R-257)
    • 4 Project 12411 Molnaya-M (Tarantul III) vessels (Chuvashiya, Dimitrovgrad, Zarechnyy and Morshansk - latter two vessels active as of 2022)[61]

Other Vessels:

Patrol/Anti-Saboteur Boats

• 3 Grachonok-class anti-saboteur ships (P-104 Nakhimovets, P-468 and P-471 Vladimir Nosov)[78][79][80]
• 9 Raptor-class patrol boats: P-281, P-280 Yunarmeets Baltiki, P-344, P-415 Georgiy Potekhin, P-437 Grigory Davidenko, P-461, P-462, Evgeny Kolesnikov, Yunarmeets Moskvy[81]

Intelligence Vessels

• 2 Alpinist-class vessels[82]
  • Syzran
  • Zhigulevsk
• 2 Vishnya-class intelligence ships:
  • Fedor Golovin
  • Vasiliy Tatishchev (active as of 2022)[83]
• Baklan-class intelligence ship KSV-2168[84]

Training Vessels

• Smolnyy-class training ship - 2 vessels (Smolnyy[85] and Perekop)

Fleet Oilers/Support Vessels

• Altay-class: 2 vessels (Elnya and Kola;[86] Kola active as of 2021)[42]
• Project 304-class Repair Ships: 3 vessels (PM-30, PM-86, PM-82 - PM-82 deployed to the Mediterranean as of March 2022)[87][88]

Hydrographic Survey Vessels

• Yug-class (Project 862): 1 vessel (Nikolay Matusevich)[89]

• 132nd Mixed Aviation Division: (HQ: Kaliningrad)[34][90] (Information on fixed-wing fighter units updated to October 2019; helicopter/transport aircraft data may be older unless indicated)
  • 4th Separate Naval Attack Aviation Regiment (regiment re-established starting 2017): Two Squadrons (with Su-24 and 12 Su-30SM/SM2 - with Kh-61 anti-ship missile)[91][92][93][94]
  • 689th Independent Fighter Aviation Regiment – Kaliningrad Chkalovsk[95] Two Squadrons: operating Su-27SM[93] (to re-equip with Su-35S/SM).[96]
  • 125th Independent Helicopter Squadron – HQ at Chkalovsk – operating Mi-8, Mi-24 (this was the former 288th Independent Helicopter Regt of the 11th Guards Army and used to be at Nivenskoye)
  • 396th Independent Shipborne Anti-Submarine Helicopter Squadron – Donskoye Air Base – Ka-27/M, Ka-29; (Ka-27M model ASW helicopters reportedly added October 2018.[92])
  • 398th Independent Air Transport Squadron – HQ at Khrabrovo – An-2, An-12, An-24, An-26, Be-12, Mi-8.

The Russian Baltic Fleet Naval Infantry Forces

• 44th Air Defence Division[34][97]
  • 183rd Guards Air Defence Missile Regiment (Two battalions with S-300P SAMs; four battalions with S-400 SAMs; six Pantsir-S1 SAM systems), in Gvardeysk[65]
  • 1545th Air Defence Missile Regiment (Two battalions with S-400 SAMs), in Znamensk (both 183rd and 1545th Air Defence Regiments were equipped with S-400 SAM systems starting in 2019.[92])

• 11th Army Corps (Gusev)[98][99][100]
  • 18th Guards Motorized Rifle Division (HQ Gusev):[101] formed in December 2020 and incorporating existing and new regiments.[102][103] As of 2021 ground combat units reported deployed within the 18th Division include:
    • 275th Motorized Rifle Regiment[104]
    • 280th Motorized Rifle Regiment[104]
    • 79th Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment (former 79th Independent Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade reformed as a regiment - Sovetsk, Kaliningrad Oblast)[105]
    • 11th Tank Regiment (Gusev, Kaliningrad Oblast)[106] (Military Unit Number V/Ch (в/ч) 41611) (Equipped with T-72B Main Battle Tanks (upgrades of T-72s to B3M-standard underway as of 2019/20[92][107][108])
    • 20th Separate Reconnaissance Battalion (Sovetsk;[98] formed 2020/21; Orlan-10 UAVs and "Sobolyatnik"[109] and "Fara-VR" reconnaissance radars)[110]
    • 22nd Guards Air Defence Missile Regiment (Tor M1/M2), in Kaliningrad[34][99][111]
  • 7th Independent Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment (Kaliningrad) (equipped with BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles as of 2021; regiment reportedly retains independent status outside 18th Motorized Rifle Division)[104][105]
  • 244th Artillery Brigade (2A36/BM-21/2S7M Malka self-propelled howitzers with Zoopark-1 counter-battery radars), BM-27 Uragan multiple rocket launchers (delivery initiated 2020) and 9P157-2 Khrizantema-S tank destroyers[103][112]) in Kaliningrad
  • Naval Infantry/Special Forces
    • 336th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade (Baltiysk)
    • 561st "Maritime Recon Point" (Special Forces battalion - HQ at Parusnoye[113])
    • 69th Guards Naval Engineer Regiment, in Gvardeysk
  • Surface-to-Surface Missile Units
    • 152nd Guards Missile Brigade (9K720 Iskander-M), at Chernyakhovsk Air Base[34][114]
    • 25th Coastal Defence Missile Brigade (BAL-E/K-300P Bastion-P/Monolit-BR coastal defence radars), at Donskoye Air Base[34][115][116][117][118]
    • Coastal missile defence unit (Bastion/Bal systems) being established in Kronshtadt, Leningrad Oblast under Baltic Fleet command as of 2021.[119]
  • 299th Training Center of Coastal Forces, in Gvardeysk
  • 561st Reconnaissance Center, in Parusnoye
  • 742nd Communication Center, in Kaliningrad
  • 841st Independent Electronic Warfare Center, in Yantarny
  • 313th Special Detachment of Anti-Sabotage Forces and Means, in Baltiysk
  • 473rd Special Detachment of Anti-Sabotage Forces and Means, in Kronstadt