they intend to have 6 carrier strike forces built by 2020.  based on their construction and promise history of the past, thats unlikely - but the 2nd largest carrier fleet in the world is not a green water committment.

 

they want to be back in the game,  these ships are part of a different cycle, they're designed to add security to their green water interests first.

Wait, I can just imagine what we will be written about the 6 Russian carriers:

 

Official:  The (insert name here) is judged to be 3 times as effective as all foreign competitors and has no equal.  (This would be for a 30,000 tonner compared to a Nimitz).

 

Russian Fanboy:  Oh yeah the (insert name here) could easily sink a Nimitz, probably 3 or 4 at once.

 

These carriers will never exist.  If they do, who will crew them?  Russia's population is imploding and their two biggest threats are Muslim birthrates and Chinese immigration.  If they build these ships, they are committing suicide.  They should spend the money on bonuses for ethnic Russian mothers to have kids.  They should pay money for every baby and raise them in state orphanages.  The Russians are finished and they know it, that's why they are sabre rattling.

Well.... thats certainly a disturbing ideal you have there.

 

From a strictly miltary point of view it's the thing to do.  From a humanistic point of view of course it's wrong.  I'm saying that the Russians have bigger issues than trying to get into an organ measuring contest with the USN.

The problem the russians have always had in attempting blue water power projection is that none of their ports are open to the sea.  The closest to that is Murmansk, which is why the russians aren't pining for more artic ice.  Vladivostok is trapped behind island chains, mostly Japan.  Even the russian islands in the Pacific force the navy into easy to monitor passages.  Ships from St. Petersberg have to run a veritable gauntlet of narrow passages to reach open sea.  The Black Sea is no better.

 

But Putin's attempt to regrow the Soviet era without the soviets reminds me of Charlemagne trying to rebuild the Roman Empier without romans.  He is falling for the same trap that killed the Soviet Union.  Namely, trying to support a huge arms buildup with a creaking economy.  It broke them before, it will break them again.

The ethnic "Russian" demographic is imploding however.  It will take many years to reverse this as demographics are in general slow and difficult to change.  What they should be doing is trying to better foster the Russian National Identity.  It does not matter if your population is blue, breaths methane, and is from Mars if they want to be, and believe they are, Russians.  This will help with the demographic problem as Russians that emigrated out or were born in other countries will have the desire to return home.  

Putin is an old Cold Warrior.  His vision of Russia is a country strong enough to challenge the air space of foreign powers.  But people are leaving because the economy tanked, the streets are ruled by mobsters and the government is increasingly despotic.  Russian Universal Health Care is universally bad and was indicated as one of the contributing factors to why women only had one child.  They didn't want to go through that experience twice.

If I were in charge of rebuilding the Russian Navy's strength, I wouldn't even think of trying for carriers, but rather focus on submarine building. Russia could build upgraded Kilo and Lada class conventional subs, newer nuclear attack subs, and a few ballistic missile subs. For surface ships, I would focus on the close-in ASW ships, just as they did during the Cold War. It would be much cheaper to maintain a few dozen subs, plus a few dozen cheap ASW frigates, than to try for hundreds of large expensive ships. With the new base in Syria, Russia has the potential to be a nuissance in the Med and Mid-East, which seems to be pretty much their aim. Add in a suitable base somewhere in the Indian Ocean, and you've got the perception of a world navy, without so much cost. Then factor in refurbishing some of the Tupolev Tu-22Ms, and station them at these bases, and the Russian Navy gets to be 'big', but without the ridiculous, and totally unacheiveable pricetag!