Following the collapse of the USSR, the Admiral Kuznetsov could have been inherited by Ukraine, which claimed ownership of it. In 1991, the ship, then assigned to the Northern Fleet, underwent tests with the Black Sea Fleet in Feodosia, leaving it in Ukrainian territory. However, the first deputy commander of the Northern Fleet flew to Ukraine at once and stepped in. The vice admiral gave the order to raise the anchor immediately and head for Severodvinsk. With its navigation lights off, the ship left its harbor and spent more than three weeks sailing to its permanent base without any aircraft and without two thirds of its crew, who were off-duty at the time. Having saved the aircraft carrier, the vice admiral rightly judged that the sailors would “catch us by train,” and that the aircraft remaining at the onshore airbase would “get there by themselves.”