Fleet Belarus location. Small fleet on Belarusian rivers. River ports and marinas

Our country has something to sell on world markets (including those overseas): equipment, metal, fertilizers, building materials, petroleum products... For this we need a fleet. Belarusian Shipping Company, Belarusian Forwarding and Freight Company, Belarusian Shipping Company - judging by these big names, you might think that we live in a serious maritime power. We'll have to disappoint. On the seas we have neither a shipping company nor a fleet. It would be nice if there was potential and serious intentions hidden behind the pretentious names. Alas, even ambitions are not visible, that is, thoughtful, calculated plans to conquer the seas and oceans on ships flying the Belarusian flag and with Belarusian cargo. Our rivers, which were once navigable, have not become shallow at all. But today they are plied mainly by fishermen's boats. The inland fleet, managed by the Belarusian River Shipping Company, is deteriorating rather than progressing. This conclusion, to put it briefly, was made at the board meeting of the State Control Committee.

But the state of affairs deserves more detailed description. For clarity, let's divide the overall picture into three fragments.

Rivermen

We will not discuss whether the country needs a developed river fleet in the 21st century. If only because back in 2002, during a trip to the Gomel region, the President gave the Ministry of Transport a number of instructions regarding the development of the industry. It was planned, in particular, to systematically increase internal water transport, develop the necessary infrastructure, invest in the repair and construction of ships for own needs and for export, expand the range of tourism services... Later, a program for the development of inland water and sea transport for 2011 - 2015 was adopted years. It was necessary not to discuss, but to carry out what was planned. But the instructions were not carried out, the program was disrupted.

The board relied on facts and figures that were revealed by an audit of the activities of inland water and sea transport organizations. Its results look discouraging. State control specialists and representatives of the Ministry of Transport, who tried to justify themselves, agreed on only one thing: the entire infrastructure of the river shipping company rests on what was created back in Soviet times.

Behind past tense All sectors of the Belarusian economy, like social and other spheres, have seriously evolved quantitatively or qualitatively. Despite all the claims of the state and society to the furniture industry and woodworking, agriculture and construction, mechanical engineering and medicine in general, they are modern. Large amounts of money have been invested in each of these areas. Everywhere they sooner or later produced results: modernization, new technologies and products, increased competitiveness and export returns.

Only the river industry has not only frozen in the positions of a quarter-century ago, but has also gone backwards. Once upon a time it built, for example, passenger hydrofoil ships "Raketa" and industrial bulk carriers. Industry! Now, at best, she is only patching up dilapidated ships, at worst, she is busy with non-core matters. The volume of cargo transported per year collapsed from 18.5 million tons to Soviet time up to a million in the 90s. During the 2012 navigation season, the shipping company transported 2.7 million tons.

But it’s good that at least something from the industry remains. Otherwise, delivery to Ostrovets, for example, of a melt boiler, the most important component of a nuclear power plant power unit, would be much more difficult, cost more and take longer. The large components of the power unit were transported by water from Volgodonsk to Kherson, where they were loaded onto four of our barges, which reached Berezino with the critical cargo. This example alone proves that the country needs a modern high-tech river fleet.

Today it consists of 12 organizations employing 2,200 people, which is, to put it mildly, not enough for the industry. There are 8 ports that have the status of branches (in Gomel, Mozyr, Brest, Mikashevichi...), the design institution "Belsudoproekt", 3 waterways enterprises, shipbuilding and ship repair plants in Rechitsa, Gomel, Petrikov. Some factories repair some things or make small "coastal vessels" (actually boats), others produce lumber and metal structures.

The scale of the enterprises and how efficiently they work were shown by the confused explanations of Ruslan Strizh, director of the Dneproberezinsk waterways enterprise. There are 77 employees here. Of the 270 million rubles allocated for modernization last year, 250 were spent on... the executive's official car. At the same time, two trucks are rusting under open air: They actually haven’t moved for two years, from the date of purchase.

"Belsudoproekt" developed a design for a small-capacity vessel: it was not used. The same fate befell the modernization projects of a dredger, a floating exploration platform, a tugboat... The institution spent 600 million rubles from the innovation fund on such research in two years, which was virtually in vain. The capacity of the ports, which mainly transship sand and crushed stone, is 50 percent loaded, their portal cranes and dredgers are even less - 20 - 30 percent. The equipment is extremely worn out. The number of ships (also not new) on the shipping company’s balance sheet, having decreased from 492 units in 2010 to 416 last year, still looks respectable. But this includes, in addition to 9 passenger watercraft, fifty tugs, a hundred barges and 88 auxiliary units: cranes, berths, landing stages, dredgers, pontoons...

Sailors

If river boaters actually do something, then the word “sailors” can be safely put in quotation marks. What does, for example, the Belarusian Shipping Company OJSC, specially created for the development of export infrastructure, do? Having practically withdrawn from core activities, he trades in petroleum products: the share of forwarding services in revenue in 2012 was less than one percent.

The Belarusian transport, forwarding and freight company has become... an intermediary in the trade of construction materials. Moreover, it worked at a loss for itself, but in favor of private counterparties, actually lending to them. Whether this constitutes a criminal offense remains to be seen. Losses were covered by renting out office space. The state invested 1,300 sq. m. in the authorized capital of the closed joint-stock company - in order to secure loans. meters of premises with a market value of more than 2 million dollars. On part of this square, the “seafarers” set up a fitness center with a sauna for themselves, which was visited mainly by company executives. Payments for electricity alone exceeded 60 million rubles per month. The managers apparently needed a lot of rest: they regularly worked on weekends. The state control did not find a clear need for this, but it accurately calculated the amount of additional payments to the general director, his deputy, the chief accountant, the secretary... However, it is difficult to separate top managers from ordinary personnel in this case: the entire staff of the company sometimes consisted of 4 - 6 people.

CJSC "Belarusian Shipping Company" specializes in... transportation of household and industrial waste by road (!) transport. When asked by the Chairman of the State Control Committee, Alexander Yakobson, how many tons of potash fertilizers the company transported in a year, the answer was zero. The manager explained his failure by the machinations of certain third parties who registered a company with the same name. As a result, they say, the courts in London and New York arrested our accounts. But the company did not have the strength (desire, skills!) to defend its financial interests and its name.

The board stated that the Ministry of Transport does not have personnel capable of purposefully developing a capable fleet and competing on the seas; transportation is farmed out to foreign companies, on which the country is losing hundreds of millions of dollars.

Ministry of Transport

The head of the department of sea and river transport of the Ministry of Transport, Andrei Chernobylets, tried to justify himself and even report on some successes. It’s interesting that for comparison I chose... Mongolia - a country with only mountain rivers, which lies much further from the seas than ours and is seriously inferior to it in economic potential and population. But this comparison was not in our favor: 177 sea vessels sail under the Mongolian flag, only 7 under the Belarusian flag... In general, shipping, capable of earning hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, has a negative foreign trade balance of 6 million. dollars.

Another significant fact. Based on the results of inspections, the state control fined organizations water transport nearly a billion rubles (with their modest turnover), another 200 million rubles were added to the budget in the form of taxes. At the same time, the ministry’s own control and audit service has not seen any violations for years, although it is even located in the same building as the freight and shipping companies...

The board assessed the work of the Ministry of Transport and its leaders responsible for the development of shipping harshly: “unsuccessful.” The river fleet is aging, the sea fleet is gone, and there is no investment, no development strategy, no initiative in its development. The program for the development of inland waterway and sea transport for 2011 - 2015 has actually failed. In essence, it was only a declaration of intent: its implementation was not monitored or controlled.

But, as A. Yakobson noted in his concluding remarks, there are no unsolvable problems in the country. This means that this one will also be solved, since it has been set: the river fleet will receive an impetus for development, and the naval fleet will be created. One way or another, pusher or tug, the shipping industry will be refloated and released into the fairway.

The first Belarusian ship will make its first voyage to transport potash fertilizers to Brazil in December of this year

According to the Ministry of Transport and Communications, annually Belarus transports about 20 million tons of cargo by sea, of which 60 percent is Belarusian export. Accordingly, the price of transportation in the export of Belarusian products constitutes a significant share and negatively affects the foreign economic balance. That is why Belarus has been hatching plans to create its own navy since 1992. And finally, these plans came true, reports Daily.

The first maritime shipping company in Belarus was created with 100% foreign participation. The Zepter group corporation (Switzerland) became the owner of 70 percent of the shares of Belmorflot CJSC, and 30 percent belonged to other foreign participants.

As Vibor Mulich, vice-president of the Zepter group and member of the supervisory board of Belmorflot CJSC, told Ezhednevnik, although the state took part in the creation of the Belarusian maritime fleet, the company has not yet received any preferences or subsidies and will work relying solely on market mechanisms even in the struggle for freight of the Belarusian Potash Company.

According to Vibor Mulic, the investment plans of Belmorflot CJSC include the purchase of seven vessels, each of which will cost 20-30 million dollars. Already, investors and shareholders of the company are negotiating with Chinese partners on the acquisition in 2011 of a modern bulk carrier with a carrying capacity of 33 thousand tons. In the third and fourth quarters of 2011, it is planned to raise the Belarusian flag for the first time on a Supramax class bulk carrier being built in China with a carrying capacity of 57 thousand tons.

Based on the agreement concluded with the Belarusian Potash Company CJSC, the first voyage to transport Belarusian potash fertilizers to Brazil will be carried out by the Belmorflot CJSC this year with the bulk carrier Katarina with a carrying capacity of 27.5 thousand tons. At the beginning of 2011, a second voyage with Belarusian fertilizers to Latin America is planned by the bulk carrier Carolina (carrying capacity 37 thousand tons).

As Alexander Sokolov, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Belmorflot CJSC, told Ezhednevnik, depending on how the market behaves and whether the state gives preferences to the first maritime shipping company in Belarus, the payback period for the project will be 7-10 years. “Despite the fact that Belarus is a land state, the spirit and traditions of the sea have always been present here. Suffice it to say that every fourth sea ​​sailor and the officer in the Soviet fleet was Belarusian by nationality,” said Alexander Sokolov. These traditions, according to the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Belmorflot CJSC, give reason to hope that the company will become a major player in the maritime cargo transportation market.

Initially, Belmorflot CJSC will transport exclusively bulk and bulk cargo to the region Latin America and to China. However, the second stage of the company’s formation is the acquisition of new ships, as a result of which the types of cargo and the geography of their delivery will expand.

“The government is very involved in the issue of creating a Belarusian navy. From president to prime minister.

Especially First Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Semashko devotes a lot of time to solving this issue. This is one of the components of the complex of services for Belarusian exports. Therefore, the government is interested in us having ships of other classes, including those that transport machinery spaces. The government was considering the possibility of establishing our company on the Venezuelan line, because it delivers about 250-350 thousand tons of cargo per year: cars, spare parts, construction materials, etc. This will already be the second stage of the company’s development,” said Alexander Sokolov. But Belmorflot CJSC ultimately expects to receive some preferences from the government.

A few years ago, people often sent me the cover of the book “The Maritime Glory of Belarus” with the message that, they say, what the “holy” myth-makers have come to is that they have already invented “sea Belarusians.” After the phrase of the State Department press secretary Jen Psaki about the “transfer of the US 6th Fleet to the shores of Belarus,” the topic of Belarusian naval glory became the subject of jokes. Absolutely not funny for the author of these lines.

In fact, Belarusian sailors are not a “holy” myth or a figment of the imagination of a narrow-minded American, but the real pride of Belarus. So that no one has any doubts about this, the book “Naval Commanders of White Rus'”, compiled by a Belarusian historian, was recently published in the series “Glorious Names of White Rus'” Nikolai Malishevsky. It contains biographies of 90 sailors, admirals and “naval” generals, whose destinies are closely connected with the Belarusian land.

It is symbolic that the presentation of this book took place on December 9 in Sevastopol, where in the center of the city there is a monument to the legendary captain of the brig "Mercury" Alexander Ivanovich Kazarsky, born in the town of Dubrovno, Orsha district, Belarusian province. I have already written about his feat for.

Russian empire gave the opportunity to prove themselves at sea to a large number of Belarusians, in particular to representatives of the Mogilev noble family of Burachkov, in which twelve people in four generations served in the Russian fleet. Yes, Rear Admiral Evgeniy Stepanovich Burachek became famous for becoming the first chief of the Vladivostok military post, and his younger brother, Pavel Stepanovich Burachek, was the head of the Kronstadt Diving School.

A famous hydrograph-geodesist came from Belarus Andrey Ippolitovich Vilkitsky. He led the first Arctic hydrographic expedition in Russia and conducted a number of studies on Novaya Zemlya. His son, Boris Andreevich, with the rank of midshipman on the ships of the Pacific squadron, he fought in the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-1905. He participated as a submarine commander in the defense of Port Arthur and was awarded many military awards. In 1914-1915 B.A. Vilkitsky sailed through the Northern Sea Route from Vladivostok to Arkhangelsk, discovering new islands. In the fall of 1915, the ships arrived in Arkhangelsk, for the first time in the history of Arctic navigation, passing the Northern Sea Route from the Bering Sea to the White Sea. In the welcome address given to Boris Andreevich, he was called “Russian Columbus.”

Among the Belarusians there was also a sailor who was awarded the highest naval rank of Russia, “full admiral” - Luka Fedorovich Bogdanovich. For his participation in the Battle of Navarino against the Turkish-Egyptian fleet, he was awarded four orders at once. different countries- Russia, Great Britain, France and Greece. During the battle, Luka Fedorovich commanded the famous battleship "Alexander Nevsky", which captured an enemy frigate.

The civil war also did not happen without Belarusian sailors. A Minsk resident fought for the White Cause Yuliy Yulievich Rybaltovsky. Among many officers of the Baltic Fleet, he ended up in the white troops of the Northern Front, where he was appointed commander of a naval armored train, which he personally named in honor of the Supreme Ruler of Russia - “Admiral Kolchak”.

On the Red side during Civil War showed himself Romuald Adamovich Muklevich, a native of the town of Suprasl, Grodno province. He commanded detachments of Red Guards, revolutionary sailors and soldiers who besieged the cadets at the Vladimir School on the Petrograd Side. After the establishment of Soviet power, R.A. Muklevich became the boss Navy Red Army, participated in the development of plans for the development of the Navy, the publication of the first Battle Manual of the Red Army Navy and the Naval Charter. In 1938 he completed his earthly path at the Kommunarka execution range, being recognized as an “enemy of the people.” Subsequently rehabilitated.

Vice Admiral is rightfully considered a real legend of the Soviet fleet Valentin Petrovich Drozd, born in the city of Buda-Koshelevo, Mogilev province. During 15 years of officer service, he took part in three wars - the Spanish Civil, the Soviet-Finnish and the Great Patriotic War, rose from the commander of a ship's combat unit to a fleet commander, and finished his service with the rank of vice admiral. The destroyer Vice Admiral Drozd was named in honor of Valentin Petrovich.

During the existence of the USSR Navy, 20 Belarusian sailors were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The first Hero of the Soviet Union in naval aviation was a Belarusian - captain A.K. Antonenko. During 34 days of fighting, he shot down eleven enemy aircraft.

Despite the absence of the BSSR sea ​​shores, a third of the Soviet Navy were Belarusians. It was not for nothing that there was a saying in the navy that, to varying degrees of decency, read:

Having left the homeland of the swamps,

Disregarding hereditary ties,

The crowd rushed into the fleet

Desperate Belarusians!

The author of these lines is very critical of the Soviet period of our history, but one cannot help but admit that the huge Soviet power from Brest to Vladivostok provided the opportunity for simple village boys from peasant and working families to make a brilliant military career.

Today, about 200 thousand people live in Belarus who served in units of the USSR Navy. To this day, Belarusian admirals serve in the Russian fleet - Alexander Viktorovich Vitko, Yuri Ivanovich Orekhovsky etc. It should be noted that Belarusians made a significant contribution to the all-Russian victory - the return of Crimea to Russia. So, a native of Rogachev, admiral Yuri Ivanovich Ilyin, who in February 2014 held the post of Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine - Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, on March 11, 2014, in connection with the events in Crimea, with a special appeal called on Ukrainian military personnel and officers not to shoot at “our Russian brothers” and made a statement about the need to solve the problems of residents of Crimea, Donetsk, Kharkov, Lugansk, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Nikolaev, Kherson at the negotiating table. In light of the then statements of the hotheads who took power in Kyiv that troops should be sent to Crimea, the admiral’s call under no circumstances to open lethal fire was extremely important.

Unfortunately, today in Belarus it is customary to hush up or blur the facts that tell us one obvious fact: with Russia, Belarusians are following the path of progress, becoming first-class military men, sailors, cosmonauts, engineers, doctors (by the way, the West views Belarusians exclusively as a labor resource for filling the shortage of unskilled labor). To see this, be sure to read the book “Naval Commanders of White Rus'”.

Kirill Averyanov-Minsky

The Baltic Sea closest to Belarus is located hundreds of kilometers from the borders of the republic. And yet, those Belarusians who believe that the republic has its own Navy are right. And that's why. For example, in the Russian Northern Fleet, Minsk patronizes the missile cruiser "Marshal Ustinov" from the operational squadron, the Grodno region takes care of the nuclear submarine "Obninsk", and the hero city of Brest and the region cherish "their" small anti-submarine ship Kola flotilla. There are also registered Belarusian ones in the Baltic warships. According to naval commanders, the assistance to the Russian Navy coming from the fraternal republic is very significant, both in goods and in money.

But Belarusians not only patronize the ships of the Russian Navy, they actually participate in the naval shipbuilding program. As we were informed at the General Staff of the Navy, a number of naval departments ordering equipment and weapons are working very productively with Belarusian enterprises. For obvious reasons, these plants were not named to us and joint stock companies Belarus. However, it is quite possible to assume that the Belarusian production association Integral supplies microcircuits of medium and high degrees of integration for the latest Russian warships. By the way, this is one of the remaining radio-electronic industry enterprises in the CIS, which survived the difficult conditions of the first years of transition to the market. It is economically beneficial for the Republic to participate in the Russian ocean-going shipbuilding program.

At the end of this August, the largest-scale exercise in the last 20 years was completed. Far East. In addition to the Ministry of Defense, other security forces fought against terrorists, poachers, state border violators. One of the culminating events of the exercise was a cruise missile strike from a Tu-160 strategic bomber against an intruder ship in the Bering Sea. By the way, it was on this giant plane that Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov was in the co-pilot’s seat.

In the early 90s, entire foreign poaching fleets firmly established themselves in the strategically important and richest Far East. Even the spawning rivers were blocked so tightly with nets that not only large red fish could not get there, but the fry did not swim into Russian waters. The country's economy suffered colossal damage. Now the entire Russian military organization has stood in the way of foreign and, together with them, Russian predators. And this was confirmed in a conversation with a SOYUZ correspondent by the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy, Fleet Admiral Vladimir KUROEDOV.

The conversation with the commander-in-chief took place in two stages. He directly supervised the exercises and bore enormous responsibility for the maneuvers that unfolded over a vast territory. But he still found time to answer questions from a war correspondent for the SOYUZ newspaper. The first part of the conversation took place at the Ukrainka military airbase. According to the admiral, the exercises should help determine the tasks and place of the Navy in the fight against terrorism in a state of emergency. Only with such exercises can we find out why the most important state of emergency law for the state, adopted back in 2001, does not work. Therefore, the President of the Russian Federation ordered large-scale exercises of our entire military state organization to be held in all regions of Russia.

The second time I managed to talk with the admiral on the commander’s boat Pacific Fleet. The boat passed by warships. Most recently, they carried out combat training missions in the Indian Ocean. Admiral Kuroyedov spoke about the Russian shipbuilding naval program.

We need such a fleet, he said, so that we have the ability to protect and defend our interests in any zone of the World Ocean.

And then he seemed to ask himself a rather difficult question: how can such a fleet be built for Russia under the current conditions?

In this strategically important issue, the commander in chief relies on the opinions and conclusions of scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences, military scientific centers. According to him, it is necessary to build ships for the near sea zone, and only then start working on ships for the oceans.

Fortunately for us,” Vladimir Ivanovich explained the concept of an expensive shipbuilding program, “ocean ships and submarines, remaining to Russia from the former Navy of the Soviet Union, allow our current fleet to solve all the necessary tasks for another 15-20 years. There is enough resource. That’s why we are now conducting exercises in Indian, Atlantic Oceans, various seas. This potential is our support.

But with the ships of the near zone, which ensure the deployment of the main forces, the situation is very difficult. Therefore, the lead ships of the near sea zone have now been laid down, but this year the construction of an ocean-going combat ship will begin at one of the Russian shipyards. According to Russian naval doctrine, such ships will now be multi-functional. Russia abandoned the expensive program to create a fleet consisting of a series of identical ships - artillery, anti-submarine, missile. Now ocean-going ships will combine all these qualities.

At the same time, nuclear and diesel submarines will continue to be built for the submarine fleet. However, giant nuclear submarines with a displacement of up to 20 thousand tons will no longer be created. As Admiral Kuroyedov said, the maximum displacement of the submarines will be up to 12 thousand tons. Apparently, this figure is scientifically substantiated and verified as the most optimal. At the same time, the admiral added that he would really not like to lay down such a shipbuilding program that subsequent commanders-in-chief “will redo it and scold Kuroedov, saying that he didn’t finish looking at it, didn’t calculate everything.” After all, the fleet itself is not just a mass of ships with crews located in their bases. First of all, covering the state in strategic directions. For Belarus, these are primarily the Baltic regions and the northern seas. From there by sea cargo is delivered to the republic. And these areas are precisely designed to support and protect the Baltic and Northern fleets. So far, Russian naval power is enough for this, but what will happen in a couple of decades? Admiral Kuroyedov refused to create new aircraft carriers.

Today and for the next five to seven years, I don’t see any tasks for aircraft carriers,” he said frankly. - For the safety of carrier-based aviation, we have one aircraft carrier. He will live for many more decades. We will not lose schools.

It is likely that the admiral did not mention another important circumstance: in the current economic conditions, the construction of aircraft carriers is very expensive. Investing huge amounts of money in them will hinder the development of other much-needed naval defense programs. And, according to experts, Admiral Kuroyedov this moment chose the most best option development of the Navy.

Two American submarines secretly observed the exercises at sea from under the water. One was located at Cape Povorotny near Nakhodka, and the other off the coast of Kamchatka. And these submarines were detected in a timely manner by the latest Russian system, which was created over the past two years. Now from Primorye to Anadyr, the entire underwater, surface and air situation for 400 kilometers is visible at the naval command post. Not a single plane or ship will approach our borders undetected. This system was created primarily by the Ministry of Defense with the direct participation of the Ministry of Transport and the State Fisheries Committee. It allows you to quickly manage all security forces in a huge region. At the Pacific Fleet command post, those on duty closely monitored the evolution of the American submarine off the coast of Kamchatka. In a few years, this system of issuing the most current information to the military and civilian leadership of Russia will cover the entire country.

And one more thing the latest system Admiral Kuroyedov said. So far it only covers the Primorsky and Khabarovsk territories. But in the future it will also spread to the entire country. It was created by the same three ministries and also Roshydromet. It provides hydrometeorological support to the fleet.

The creation of this system, noted Admiral Kuroyedov, is already improving the effectiveness of combat forces by almost 50 percent. By 2005-2006 it will spread to all Russian fleets.

In addition, the fleet has already created satellite video communications. From the Navy command post in Moscow, you can communicate in video mode with any warship or aircraft anywhere in the World Ocean. In a normal conversation, consult with commanders, indicate the most likely course of action in a specific situation. Satellites of any ministries can be involved in it. It is simply impossible to intercept such information, according to experts.

It is worth adding that it is likely that a number of Belarusian enterprises participated in the creation of the latest Russian defense systems. It is possible that Belarusians will already take direct part in the next exercises of the Russian military organization in the Baltic. Aviation and air defense of the republic will reliably cover the Baltic Fleet and its bases.

During the times of the USSR, there was a tradition of giving naval vessels of the civil fleet and warships of the Navy the names of cities of the Union republics, regardless of whether the country had access to the sea or not. For example, the aircraft-carrying cruiser Minsk, launched in 1975, was named after the Belarusian capital. But the matter was not limited to the Belarusian capital alone. TUT.BY decided to find out which cities of Belarus can be found in the names of sea vessels that plow or have plied the expanses of the seas and oceans.

My homeland is Belarus

Before moving on to Belarusian toponymy in the World Ocean, it is worth mentioning the fact that the very name of our country was used as a name for a sea vessel, albeit in its Soviet-Russian name. The automobile-passenger airliner "Belarus" rolled off the stocks in Turku, Finland in 1975. "Belorussia" became the first vessel of the R-1765 project and gave its name to this type of vessel.

The Belorussia class vessels were used to transport passengers and cars on internal Black Sea routes within the borders of the USSR. The liners were built to comfortably carry 480 passengers and 250 cars.

Subsequently, it turned out that the actual number of cars transported by ships was significantly less than the calculated one - at the end of the 1970s, the level of motorization of the population in the USSR was only about 40 cars per 1000 people. In the 1980s, all five Belarus class ships underwent refurbishment at West German shipyards, during which new passenger cabins, restaurants and cinemas were installed in the liners' vast garages. With the collapse of the USSR, all ships were sold to various shipping companies Worldwide. The first vessel of the series - the liner "Belorussia" - was renamed "Kazakhstan II" after its sale in 1993. In 1996, the ship changed ownership again and began to serve under the name "Delphin". cruise routes in the Mediterranean and Baltic seas.

Naval "Minsk"

Traditionally, the names of ships of the USSR Navy were chosen big cities, most often the capitals of the union republics. As already mentioned, the name of the Belarusian capital was used more than once as a name for a warship. For the first time, the name “Minsk” was given to the leader of Project 38 destroyers of the Baltic Fleet of the USSR Navy. The destroyer, which entered service in 1938, fought a number of battles in the Soviet-Finnish War, took part in the annexation of Latvia, and went through the entire Great Patriotic War, during which it was severely damaged several times. After the war, Minsk was converted into a training ship, in which role it served until 1958. That same year, the ship was withdrawn from the fleet, turned into a floating target and sunk by missiles in the Gulf of Finland.

The next bearer of the name of the Belarusian capital was the aircraft-carrying cruiser "Minsk" of project 1143. Ships of this type were, in fact, the first aircraft carriers in the USSR Navy, capable of serving combat jet planes. However, the desire to combine the functions of an aircraft carrier and an anti-submarine cruiser in one ship, as well as the weak characteristics of Soviet carrier-based aircraft, negated the combat effectiveness of the ships. The fate of the cruiser "Minsk" is known and not as sad as that of some of its brothers. After being withdrawn from the fleet in the early 1990s, the ship was supposed to suffer the fate of scrap metal, but, nevertheless, due to the bankruptcy of the new owners, the Minsk survived and even became an attraction. Until February 2016 theme park"Minsk World", created on the basis of a cruiser, was located in Shenzhen, China. The park is now closed and the ship has been towed to Zhoushan for repairs, after which it will be moved to a new theme park in Nantong, according to the owners.

Not all ships named after the Belarusian capital were excluded from the fleet. The large landing ship "Minsk" survived the hard times of the 1990s and is still part of the Baltic Fleet of the Russian Navy. However, it received this name only in 2000; before that, built in 1983 at the Polish shipyard in Gdansk, the ship was simply called BDK-43.

The coast guard ship "Minsk" of the border department of the FSB of the Russian Federation is also on combat duty in the Baltic Sea. Kaliningrad region. The Project 12412 small anti-submarine ship was built in 1987 and was originally called simply PSKR-817, and, like the BDK-43, was renamed Minsk in 2000.

However, not only warships bore the proud name “Minsk”. In 1963, from the stocks of the Gdansk shipyard. The bulk carrier "Minsk" of project B-44 (Poland) left the Paris Commune. The cargo ship worked for the Black Sea Shipping Company for more than two decades and was decommissioned in 1989.

From Brest to Bykhov

Minsk, of course, is popular, but far from the only Belarusian city after which they were named. sea ​​vessels. Also in the names of the ships one could find almost all modern regional centers of Belarus and some regional ones. First on the list is the small anti-submarine ship "Brest" of Project 1124 M, which is part of the Northern Fleet of the Russian Navy. Built in 1988, the MPK was first called “Brest Komsomolets”, in 1992 it was renamed “MPK-194”, and already in 2000 - to “Brest”.

The Project 745P border patrol ship "Brest" is on combat duty in the waters of the Pacific Ocean. The ship's home port - distant Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky - shares a distance of just over seven and a half thousand kilometers with the Belarusian city.

In the early 1950s, the Leningrad TsKB-32 tanker of Project 563 type “Kazbek” was developed (the name was given after the first vessel of the project built). In the 1950s, 70 ships of this project rolled off the slipways of Soviet shipyards, two of them were named in honor of the cities of Belarus. The tanker, named "Grodno", entered service in April 1956. The process of building a ship on the stocks of the Kherson Shipyard is captured in a color photograph by the famous Soviet photographer Semyon Fridlyand.

The second ship of this project with a Belarusian city in the name was the tanker Molodechno, built at the Admiralty Shipyard in Leningrad in 1955. It would seem, why was such a large ship named after a city that not only has no access to the sea, but doesn’t even have a navigable river? The answer perhaps lies in the fact that until 1960 the city of Molodechno, like Grodno, was the center of the region in the BSSR. Both ships “Grodno” and “Molodechno” served for a long time in the Black Sea Shipping Company and were decommissioned in the late 1970s.

By the way, this is not the only case when the name of the city of Molodechno was given sea ​​vessel. In 1988, the fishing trawler Molodechno was built at the Yaroslavl Shipyard. He worked for a long time on the Andeg fishing collective farm near Murmansk, until in the late 2000s he was sold to Argentina, where he changed his name to “Tango I”.

Another regional center of Belarus, whose name became the name of the ship, was Mogilev. At the Finnish shipyard in the city of Turku in 1952, the Mogilev dry cargo ship of the Hassan type was launched. The dry cargo ship was included in the Northern Shipping Company of the USSR MMF, where it worked until 1975. In 1984, it was cut into scrap metal. Another ship of this project was the dry cargo ship "Pinsk", built in 1953 (from 1939 to 1954, the city of Pinsk was the center of the Pinsk region).

The tradition of naming naval vessels after cities was not limited only to regional centers, past or present. Many ships were named after Belarusian regional centers, and some even combined the name settlement and the specialization of the vessel. For example, in 1962, two timber carriers of the same type, Bobruiskles and Braslawles, were built at the Gdansk shipyard. Both vessels served on the routes of the USSR maritime fleet until the end of the 1980s.

However, more often the ships were named more traditionally, using only the full name of the city. One of the large refrigerated fishing trawlers of Project 1288 built in 1980 was named “Borisov”. Currently, the vessel is owned by Okeanrybflot OJSC, its home port is Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

The Project 503 refrigerated seiner-trawler “Bykhov” is engaged in fishing in the waters of the Kola Bay of the Barents Sea.

The huge bulk carrier, built at a shipyard in the GDR in 1982, was named after a city in the Gomel region - “Dobrush”. For a long time, the ship sailed under the Ukrainian flag and was registered at the port of Mariupol. In the late 2000s, Dobrush was sold for scrap to Vietnam.

The seiner trawler "Kobrin", built in 1989 according to a project similar to the "Bykhov", in the port of Klaipeda, Lithuania.

In 1966, the Mozyr bulk carrier of project B-44 (Poland) was built at a shipyard in Szczecin, Poland (the above-mentioned bulk carrier Minsk was built according to the same project). Until 1990, Mozyr was assigned to the Black Sea Shipping Company in the port of Odessa. In 1992 it was cut into metal in Shanghai.

In 1969 and 1970, two dry cargo ships of Project R-1476, Novopolotsk and Novogrudok, were built at the Finnish shipyard in Turku. Both vessels were sent to the Baltic Shipping Company of the USSR MMF. In 1996, Novogrudok was sold for scrap to Bangladesh, where it ended its journey.

The fate of the bulk carrier Novopolotsk was a little different. In 1996, the ship was also withdrawn from the Baltic Shipping Company, but was sold to new ownership in the United United Arab Emirates, where it changed its name to “Wald Al Agouz”. However, in 2001 it was sold for scrap.