Askold was a Russian, later a Soviet, and finally a British armored cruiser, under which the keel was laid in 1899 at the Germania Shipyard in Kiel, launched in March 1900, and commissioned in the Russian Navy in 1902. The length of the ship was 132.5 m, width 15.6 m, and a displacement of about 6,200 tons. The maximum speed was 23-24 knots. The main armament was 12 152 mm guns, and the secondary armament consisted of, among others, 12 76 mm guns or six 381 mm torpedo tubes.
Askold was one of three cruisers ordered by the tsarist government from foreign shipyards for service in the Far East. It turned out to be a very successful ship - it was characterized by a very high maximum speed for those times, well-placed weapons and relatively cheap. It also had a highly reliable drive. The downsides, however, include the poor living conditions of the crew and the average durability of the ship. At the beginning of 1903, Askold reached Port Arthur and became part of the Russian fleet stationed in the Far East. He took part in the Japanese-Russian war (19904-1905) and in the Battle of the Yellow Sea on August 10, 1904, but the conflict survived - on internment in Shanghai. At the outbreak of World War I, he was still active in the Far East, and later crossed the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea to support the Dardanelles operation in 1915. In 1916 in Toulon, the cruiser underwent a major overhaul, and at the end of that year, it was sent to the Russian North Ocean Flotilla. In 1917 he joined Murmansk. During the intervention of the Entente countries against the Bolsheviks, it was seized by the English. In 1922 it was returned to Bolshevik Russia, but due to its terrible technical condition, it was scrapped in the same year at the Hamburg shipyard.