In May and September 2017, in the course of the Russian military campaign in Syria, Admiral Essen fired Kalibr cruise missile at targets in the Hama and Deir ez-Zor regions, respectively.

[7] On 25 August 2018, the Black Sea Fleet reported Admiral Essen, along with its sister ship Admiral Grigorovich, were making a "planned passage from Sevastopol to the Mediterranean Sea" to join the Russian Navy's Mediterranean task force.

[9] On 29 March 2022, two Kalibr cruise missiles launched from the ship destroyed the regional council building in Mykolaiv.

[10] According to an advisor to the Ukrainian President's Office, Oleksiy Arestovich, on 3 April 2022 the ship was allegedly seriously damaged by Ukrainian Armed Forces as a result of an attack using an initially unspecified weapon system, later reported as being a R-360 Neptune anti-ship cruise missile.

][12] On 12 April 2022, Russian Defence Ministry released a video showing Admiral Essen allegedly destroying a Ukrainian Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) off the coast of Crimea, using two missiles of the Shtil-1 surface-to-air missile system.