Name of killed 'hero of Russia' lives on at a 35-years-old hulk
Locals express indignation as an old and outdated naval ship is renamed after Roman Mankevich, a Northern Fleet elite soldier killed in Ukraine.
The P-940 was officially renamed 'Hero of Russia Roman Mankevich' in a ceremony that took place in the port of Severomorsk on November 26. Family members of the killed soldier and several high-ranking representatives of the Northern Fleet had gathered at the pier of the strategically important naval base.
"Roman Yuryevich embodies the image of a modern Russian warrior—a defender of the Fatherland, a fearless marine," Vice Admiral Eduard Mikhailov said in a address.
The daughter and son of the killed warrior subsequently unveiled the ship's new name plate. The golden letters at the plate appear as the only up-to-date part of the 35-year-old vessel.
The ship is one of few remaining vessels of Project PB1415. It was reportedly built in 1990 and was for many years part of the Baltic Fleet's 313th Special Purpose Unit for Underwater sabotage in Baltiysk.
Locals in the Murmansk region express indignation with the fact that such an old and apparently outdated ship is given the name of a 'hero of Russia.'
"It is a shame," a reader of the Northern Fleet newspaper Na Strazhe Zapolyare writes in a comment.
"Could they not have found a newer vessel?" another reader adds.
"It should have been scrapped, rather than renamed after a Hero," a third man remarks.
Roman Mankevich was from Murmansk and served in the 61st Navel Infantry Brigade, a Northern Fleet elite unit based in Sputnik only few kilometres from the border to Norway and Finland.
In 2013, he signed a contract with the armed forces and subsequently started his service in the marines, Na Strazhe Zapolyare reports. Mankevich also fought in Syria, and took part in a seven-month combat mission aboard missile cruiser Marshal Ustinov. He was deployed in Ukraine as Russia launched its full-scale war, and was reported killed in October 2022.
Mankevich is one of several hundred men from the 61st Navel Infantry Brigade that have been killed in the war of aggression. Many were killed shortly after the start of the onslaught. A Norwegian intelligence report concluded that the brigades in the Kola Peninsula had lost up to 80 percent of their capacities in less than on year of full-scale war.
