——I like that they are expensive to maintain-—
The ship is a jobs program. Maintenance provides jobs.
In a warless economy, defense maintenance jobs are very desirable
My comment touched on the massive money problems Russia faces. They are poor compared to us, in a big way.
It reminded me of the meme that the Soviet effort to match our space shuttle was the last straw that broke them economically, in some part.
I do not know if that is actually true, but I know they spent a lot of hard cash on it because they could not fabricate a lot of the complex stuff themselves, and had to buy it on the world market with real money.
So I say to the Russians “Spend, spend, spend”.