Coastal Defence Ship Vice Admiral Popov laid down on 08 September 1874 at the Nikolaev Admiralty Shipyard, launched on 07 October 1875, commissioned in 1876.

During the Russo-Turkish War, she was assigned to the defense of Odessa and her armament was reinforced by a pair of four-pounder guns mounted on the bridge wings. At some point early in her career, Vitse-admiral Popov was fitted with a telescoping spar torpedo. Together with Novgorod, the ship made a cruise to the Romanian town of Sulina on the Danube in mid-1878. Testing before the war revealed that the larger inboard propellers were more effective than the smaller outboard ones and that there was insufficient steam produced to supply all the engines, but the war delayed plans to remove the outermost pair until 1878. This reduced her total power to 3066 ihp (2286 kW) and her speed by about one knot. After the war the ship received armoured covers for her engine room skylight and the central barbette hatch to protect against plunging fire. In 1883, Vice-admiral Popov was reboilered and her old boilers were refurbished and transferred to Novgorod.

She was reclassified as a coast-defence ironclad on 13 February 1892 by which time her armament had been augmented by two 37-millimetrequick-firing Hotchkiss five-barreled revolving cannon. These guns had a range of 2700 m and a rate of fire of 32 rounds per minute.

By the following year her hull and machinery were in poor condition. The ship was turned over to the Port Authority of Nikolaev for disposal on 2 May 1903.

The ship was decommissioned on 03 July 1903 and sold for scrap in December 1911.