Hmm, well Ukraine didn’t really “buy” them from Russia. It just received these because they were in Ukraine when the USSR broke up. Same with those Tu-160 bombers and the associated cruisemissiles. They sold these back to Russia too.

Russia doesn’t deserve it since they keep their own cruisers operating at full combat strength

Seems as if you didn’t make up your mind yet. First you say Russia keeps their own cruisers operating at full strength and afterwards you say they should give them away to someone who can afford them…
All of the Russian Slava’s are in an excellent condition (to Russian standards), all of them are regularily involved in exercises and always seem to be well maintained. So an extra one would probably be kept well too (although that would probably sacrifice some maintenance of some Udaloys or Sovremennies)
Last week Moskva (former Slava) from the Black Sea fleet was in Malta together with Smetliviy (Kashin II), it’s Northern Fleet sister (Marshal Ustinov) is in the exercise with Kuznetsov and Pyotr Velikiy…
I wouldn’t say they are neglecting them. No there is no possibility of placing some extra GIF launchers on them. First it wouldn’t be useful anyway, because they lack the guidance radar for extra missiles. Any dedicated attack would still kill the ship. “an effective AAW cruiser” is more determined by its radars and possibility to guide many missiles at a time instead of by the number of missiles carried. I would say add some Kashtan to it. The more layers you have, the better, this compensates a bit for the lack of guidance for the long-range SAMs. Second you would sacrifice some safety for it since these launchers just next to the side of your ship are quite vulnerable.
And third, I don’t think there’s space enough for them.

weird thing, if you look at the front of the superstructure, it looks very broad.
But then if you look at those davits, it looks like a rather small vessel… Very high Helo platform.

Canada is one of the very few Navies I really respect. Always developped their own stuff, or at least a large part of it and most of the time coming with very good new solutions. I love the shape of their Ships too.
As for the submarine, must be damn frightening in there when there’s a fire. I hope everything is fine now.

If I were Canada, I would try to get rid of these subs. Nothing but misery has come from them, leaking valves and gauges, now this fire, and iirc there were some more trouble in the beginning too…

k here we go:
There is the Metel missile, Russian designation 85R, it was the old missile based on the Kresta and Kara ASW cruisers.
There is also the Rastrub missile, Russian designation 85RU, it has a slightly larger range and a better torpedo below its belly.
There is also the 85RUS, which is the Nuclear tipped version.
The 85R system was later upgraded to fire the 85RU and 85RUS missiles too.
Indeed the anti-ship engagement was with the torpedo below its belly.
My sources had their doubts about the pictures too. The one with the green torpedo with the rubber nose is the old 85R missile. The one with the white glass nose is the 85RU. As a remark he also said he didn’t know why it didn’t have the torpedo below its belly. He also gave the option of a nuclear tipped on, yet made the same remark as me, that “no one would show a nuke so easely, at least I suspect”. As you see he didn’t entirely rule it out as I did, but still doubts…

Cool, those seem to be the old U-boat shelters in front of the picture too…

For GDL, depends where that torpedo is… A submarine can’t turn very fast and if the torpedo strikes the decoy at let’s say 500m in front of the submarine, they’ll have trouble, because certainly the submarine can’t turn around within such a range, or they’ll at least close to 200m from the explosion… If you shoot it backwards, you can still keep going. Of course a submarine is more survivable in front…

Yes, two of them are built for the Italian Navy, one is launched, a few months ago, the other one is still under construction I think.