 "Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza Kuznetsov" was designed by the Neva Design Bureau, St. Petersburg, and built at the Nikolayev South Shipyard (Chernomorskoye Shipyard) in the Ukrainian SSR.She was launched in 1985, commissioned in 1990, and became fully operational in 1995.The vessel was named "Riga", "Leonid Brezhnev", and "Tbilisi", before finally being named after Soviet admiral Nikolay Kuznetsov.