The mid-size landing ship of the Ukrainian Navy L401 Yury Olefirenko next Tuesday, November 26, will leave the water area of Mykolaiv Shipyard where the repair took place from August 7.
Yuri Olefirenko is a mid-size landing ship of the Ukrainian Navy of Project 773 (NATO code Polnocny-C). From its original commissioning in 1971 and until the 2014 annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, she was based in the Southern Naval Base at Donuzlav. Since then Yuri Olefirenko was relocated to Ochakiv.
It was built at Stocznia Północna shipyard in Gdansk, Poland in 1970 for the Soviet Navy and was numbered SDK-137. SDK is a Russian abbreviation for a mid-size landing ship (Sredniy Desantnyi Korabl, SDK). As a result of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet division between Russian Black Sea Fleet and Ukrainian Navy, in 1994 SDK-137 was passed to Ukrainian Navy and was renamed to SKD Kirovohrad. In 1996 it was commissioned and given a number U401 Kirovohrad.
In 2016, it was renamed again to Yuri Olefirenko in a memory of Ukrainian marine who perished during the War in Donbas. In 2018, the ship received the number L401 according to the new classification system of ships of the Ukrainian Navy.