The album is at the same time a complete departure from the Charlier-Hubinon series as well as a logical development of their work: Playing in the new political realities of the 1990s, in particular the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the fall of the Iron Curtain: Set in 1991, after Buck Danny 'loses' his aircraft carrier in a war game exercise, he is sent on a diplomatic mission to be an observer on the Soviet Union's latest aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov and arrives there just in time to be a pawn in the attempted 1991 August Coup.