Are they serious or is this just made-up crap from the notoriously anti-China Business Insider? Are they trying give Russians the idea that the Varyag is Russian territory like Ukraine so Russia goes to war with China over an abandoned unfinished carrier?
Someone in the Russian Duma did suggest this, but I wouldn't call it a serious suggestion.
PLAN isn't in the market to sell Liaoning now, but down the line when they have enough CATOBAR carriers getting rid of Liaoning and Shandong somehow isn't out of question. That is a long long way away though and the rest of the proposal:
Karginov, a member of Russia's right-wing Liberal Democratic Party, suggested the repurchased Liaoning be renamed after party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky and be made the new Black Sea Fleet flagship.
I don't think those bits are serious, although personally Liaoning (sorry,
Vladimir Zhirinovsky) transiting the Bosphorus under her own power to return to Nikolaev has a nice ring to it.
The proposal came out a while ago and there's been (not very serious) discussion on Chinese social media too. Dabao (the guy that does all those PLA CGs) suggested instead of just the carrier PLAN sell them a whole CSG to go with it and even drew up the ships he recommends:
All seven ships (Liaoning + 2 x 051C + 4 x Sovremenny ) will be all steam turbine and a lot of the weapon systems are Russian to begin with.
I'm not sure dumping seven steam turbine ships on the Russian are a good idea: on the one hand they're pretty terrible at maintaining those, on the other hand maybe with 7 of them they will have to shape up and get serious about it.
