As is customary in the new Russian practice, if the situation is close to a stalemate, then no one will help except the President or the Prime Minister. It was to the Prime Minister that the management of one of the largest Russian enterprises for the construction of warships, including aircraft carriers, the Baltiysky Zavod, was forced to turn. This unique enterprise is located on the territory of the Vasilievsky Island of St. Petersburg. What is the appeal of the general director of "Baltiyskiy Zavod" to Vladimir Putin. The essence of the letter is as follows: the St. Petersburg enterprise remains the only enterprise in Russia that can produce aircraft-carrying cruisers, as well as produce steam generators for nuclear icebreakers. Despite all its obvious need for the state, the latter for some reason does not supply the plant with serious orders for the production of warships and other relevant equipment. In such conditions, as it often happens in our country, some construction companies drew attention to the Baltiysky Zavod, or rather to the land on which it stands. Their leaders already see a new residential complex for several million square meters of housing on the site of the current Baltiysky Zavod. Andrei Fomichev, the general director of the St. Petersburg plant, is concerned about this increased attention of construction companies.
If we consider the current situation in more detail, we can come to the conclusion that the interest in the company is by no means idle. Baltiyskiy Zavod is in such a state that it brings losses every year. In an economically unstable situation, many officials may have an ineradicable desire to immediately sell or first bankrupt and then sell this enterprise. Of course, the construction of a new residential neighborhood in the Northern Capital is a very profitable business and no potential of the Baltic plant in the near future will be able to “surpass” the income from the sale of housing stock. But the matter here from the category of general economic goes into the plane of the prestige of the entire Russian defense industry. If the owners of the enterprise decide to liquidate the plant, then Russia will simply have no stocks for the construction of aircraft carriers. They (aircraft carriers) are already planned to be purchased abroad, and later such purchases will become the norm for our state. If this happens, then our country will have to forget about the status of the Great Maritime Power. Therefore, the preservation of the plant and worried in the power circles of our state.
It is worth noting that if the authorities do not pay attention to the Baltiyskiy Zavod in the near future, a raider seizure is also possible. Criminal organizations are unlikely to stop at the fact that this enterprise belongs to the regime. Given the current level of corruption in Russia, there are no significant barriers to raiding. At the same time, the laws on state and private property themselves can often be interpreted in two ways, which allows dishonest officials affiliated with criminal syndicates to decide on the re-registration of the documentation base of almost any enterprise. In such a situation, the appeal of the management of "Baltiyskiy Zavod" to Prime Minister Putin was extremely timely.
Why did the companies, which had long "looked after" the factory land for their needs, delayed taking active steps to liquidate the enterprise? The point here is not only that the Baltiyskiy Zavod is a military manufacturing enterprise. There is one more problem for the "development" of the lands lying under the "Baltiyskiy Zavod". This problem lies in the serious ecological imbalance of the territory. Due to the fact that the plant produced equipment for nuclear swimming vessels, the soil under the plant is literally saturated with various kinds of heavy metals, oil products and synthetic acids. Even if we assume that residential buildings could grow on this land in the future, then only several billion rubles would be required to clean up the territory. In turn, this figure would be added to the cost of housing on Vasilievsky Island and would make it the most expensive on the planet. With all this, not every St. Petersburg resident would dare to buy an apartment on the ground, where nuclear reactors for icebreakers were recently completed.
Let's hope that, thanks to federal support, the Baltiysky Zavod will get out of such a difficult situation and start producing everything for which it was actually built, namely for the production of effective equipment for the Russian Navy.
