The Borei class was originally designed around the R-39M submarine-launched ballistic missile. When that program failed after repeated test failures and was abandoned, the entire submarine design had to be reworked to accommodate a smaller replacement: the RSM-56 Bulava. This was not a minor adjustment. The Bulava's dimensions, launch systems, and fire-control requirements differed substantially from the R-39M, and the redesign added years to an already delayed schedule. In the end, the switch proved consequential in another way: the 2007 START treaty data exchange revealed that all Borei-class submarines would carry 16 Bulava missiles instead of the 12 R-39Ms originally planned. The failure of one weapons program inadvertently increased the firepower of its successor.

Construction at the Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk lurched forward through the economic chaos of the late 1990s and early 2000s. On April 15, 2007, the submarine was rolled from the construction hall into a launch dock, still only 82 percent complete. The Russian government committed nearly 5 billion rubles -- 40 percent of the Navy's entire 2007 weapons budget -- to finish the job. Speculation swirled that the Kremlin would rush the boat through testing to coincide with the 2008 presidential election. Instead, the submarine was finally launched on February 13, 2008, its reactor activated in November of that year, and sea trials began in June 2009. Software glitches in the automated launch control system delayed Bulava testing further.

The sea trials that followed were a catalog of the unexpected. Navigation systems and buoyancy controls were validated through 2010, but ice conditions in the White Sea forced postponement of weapons testing from winter to summer 2011. In December 2010, technical defects were announced, requiring at least six months of repair. On June 28, 2011, the first Bulava was successfully launched from the submarine's tubes. State trials concluded in January 2012, but a fresh round of software problems in the fire-control system prevented the commissioning date from being met. Defense Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov publicly confirmed the delay. The Sevmash shipyard then billed the Defense Ministry 30 million rubles for the cost of maintaining a submarine the Navy refused to accept -- a dispute rooted partly in the absence of suitable mooring quays at the Kamchatka base where the vessel was originally destined to serve.

On January 10, 2013, the Yury Dolgorukiy finally joined the Russian Navy. Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu presided over the ceremony at Severodvinsk, reporting via video link to President Vladimir Putin that St. Andrew's ensign had been raised -- the traditional symbol of a warship entering Russian naval service. After a series of exercises in 2014, the submarine was declared fully operational with the Northern Fleet, not the Pacific Fleet as originally planned. In 2015, the Yury Dolgorukiy completed its first deterrent patrol, silently carrying its 16 Bulava missiles beneath the Arctic waters. The vessel that took nearly two decades to build had finally assumed the role its designers envisioned: a mobile, survivable platform for nuclear deterrence. In 2024, the submarine entered a prolonged refit expected to last several years.