In the early 2000s, Russia's state-owned icebreaker fleet consisted mainly of Soviet-era vessels dating back to the 1970s and 1980s. Whereas the Soviet Union had been steadily building up the world's largest icebreaker fleet, Russia had managed to commission only one nuclear-powered icebreaker during the decade following its dissolution. In addition, the construction of another nuclear-powered icebreaker had been suspended in the mid-1990s due to lack of funds and a number of older diesel-powered icebreakers were written off in the 1990s.