Nerpa was laid down at the Komsomolsk-on-Amur shipyard in 1993, but its completion was delayed for nearly a decade due to a lack of funds caused by the economic crisis of the early 1990s.

Aleksandr Golts, defence editor of the Yezhednevny Zhurnal newspaper, said that in the 1980s, the Amur shipyard turned out submarines "one after another, like pancakes,"[8] but from 1993 to 2008 had produced just one.

Nikolay Povzyk, the head of the shipyard, complained they had not been paid the 1.9 billion roubles (63.8 million dollars) owed for the work carried out on Nerpa.

[9] In 2008, Russia had an agreement pending with India worth US$2 billion for the lease of Nerpa and another Project 971 Shchuka-B-class submarine.

[citation needed] By August 2010, Russia was training a crew from the Indian Navy to sail the boat to India in fulfilment of the lease agreement.

[18] On 1 July 2011, Russian Navy chief Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky was quoted as holding that the Indian crew is now absolutely prepared for operating the submarine, which will be on a 10-year lease.

[22][23] The Nerpa was returned to Russia in June 2021, ahead of the expiry of the 10 year lease, due to "increasingly unreliable powerplant and maintenance issues" besides the overall condition of the vessel which was extensively used by the Indian Navy to train crews on advanced nuclear submarines.

An accident occurred aboard K-152 Nerpa at 8:30 PM local time on 8 November 2008,[26] during an underwater test run in the Pacific Ocean.

[30][31] Three of the dead were military personnel and the rest were civilians from the Vostok, Zvezda, Era and Amur shipbuilding yards who were members of the acceptance team.

[32] The incident involved the accidental triggering of a fire extinguishing system which sealed two forward compartments and released Halon 2402 (Freon R-114B2), dibromotetrafluoroethane[33] gas into them.

[34] On 10 November, a Russian Navy statement blamed the disaster on an "unsanctioned operation" of the fire suppression system aboard Nerpa.

[37] A Russian team visited India for a joint investigation, which led to the submarine being dry docked for repairs at a cost of ₹125 crore ($20 million) to fix the damage.