Ukraine’s first Turkish-built Ada-class corvette hit the water on October 2 in a ceremony led by the First Lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska.
“Today in Turkey, I had the honor of launching a corvette that will serve Ukraine and at the same time have a Turkish heart. Ada-class corvette Hetman Ivan Mazepa will be the first ship of this class for the Ukrainian Navy,” Zelenska wrote in a social media post.
The corvette was launched almost exactly a year after starting construction at the RMK Marine shipyard. This was also when the ship was named after Ivan Mazepa, a Ukrainian Cossack leader from the turn of the 17th century.
Ukraine’s Ivan Mazepa-class corvettes are based on the 99.5-meter Ada-class corvettes that were built for the Turkish Navy between 2005 and 2019. Turkey is also exporting four of the corvettes to Pakistan.
While the first ship is built in Turkey, Ukraine expected to build follow-on ships at the Okean (Ocean) Shipyard in Mykolaiv, a plan likely to be complicated by the Russian invasion in Ukraine which began in February this year.
According to Ukrainian defense minister Oleksii Reznikov, Hetman Ivan Mazepa will be homeported in Sevastopol, a Crimean port city on the Black Sea.
