The Yak-38 and the Kiev class cruisers

1) What 's appened?
2) Why the Yak takes off from the ship stern?
3) Does the ejection seat of the Yak work also under the water??

A two seat Yak attempted to take off from a kiev class carrier at sea.

It is not the stern... there is no ski jump on Kiev class carriers.

Seems to... there appeared to be two ejection seats launching, with one crewman landing on the deck... don't know where the other guy went.

Likely an automatic ejection.

I must have said it wrong. Fleet wasn't involved in Afghanistan. I meant there were no choice other than Yak's as CAS in case of a marine operation far from soviet airfields like Falkland war was for UK.

Sorry I wasn't clear... the tests of the Yak in Afghanistan were to test it for the CAS role and if it had been successful it would have been mass produced for the Army and likely used in the navy in the light strike role for landing forces etc the way the AV-8 is used in the US Marines.

I suspect the film has been reversed... presumably by accident.

"The birth of carrier-based aviation": how vertical take-off and landing aircraft were developed

Birth of Soviet carrier based aviation, but a dead end technology that has been consigned to history... thank goodness.

Of interest perhaps? The original picture actually shows a Ka-27 helicopter on the flight deck and not the supposedly Ka-25 as in the above caption from TASS. Probably still testing the Ka-27 back then.

The Ka-27 actually entered operational service before the west noticed it was a new and different helicopter with much better performance...

I suspect TASS didn't want to tell them otherwise....