An excavation pier around the Russian warship Murmansk that took three years to build has now been sealed, and within weeks the contractor will start the final phase of demolishing the old battleship, reports the 'Barents Observer'. On Christmas Eve 1994 the 1955-built cruiser “Murmansk” was being towed from its home port towards India for scrapping. Off the coast of Finnmark the towline of the decommissioned Russian cruiser broke and it ran ashore near the small Norwegian town of Sørvær. In 2009 the Norwegian Government decided to remove the wreck.