Russian frigate Admiral Essen

Admiral Essen is a frigate of the of the Russian Navy named in honour of Admiral Nikolai Ottovich von Essen. The ship construction begun at the Yantar Shipyard in Kaliningrad in July 2011, and it was launched in November 2014. It is based with the Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol.

Service

In May and September 2017, in the course of the Russian military campaign in Syria, Admiral Essen fired Kalibr cruise missile at targets in the Hama and Deir ez-Zor regions, respectively.
On 25 August 2018, the Black Sea Fleet reported Admiral Essen, along with its sister ship, were making a "planned passage from Sevastopol to the Mediterranean Sea" to join the Russian Navy's Mediterranean task force.

During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine the ship was involved in cruise missile strikes against Odesa.
On 29 March 2022, two Kalibr cruise missiles launched from the ship destroyed the regional council building in Mykolaiv.
According to an advisor to the Ukrainian President's Office, Oleksiy Arestovich, on 3 April 2022 the ship was allegedly seriously damaged by Ukrainian Armed Forces as a result of an attack using an initially unspecified weapon system, later reported as being a R-360 Neptune anti-ship cruise missile.
On 12 April 2022, Russian Defence Ministry released a video showing Admiral Essen allegedly destroying a Ukrainian Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicle off the coast of Crimea, using two missiles of the Shtil-1 surface-to-air missile system. No video of an impact or wreckage were provided.
Sometime between 1 and 3 October 2023, Admiral Essen was transferred - along with - to Novorossiysk, Krasnodar Krai.
On 22 January 2026, in Moscow, the Second Western District Military Court formally accused Andrii Shubin, then commander of the 406th Artillery Brigade of the Ukrainian Navy, causing minor damage to the frigate Admiral Essen on 2 April 2022, injuring one person. The "court demanded 2.2 billion rubles in damages" for Admiral Essen. Ukrainian media falsely reported that the report stated that the ship was destroyed, rather than suffering minor damage. As of 2026, the ship remains in active service.