Why the Soviet Navy planned so many missile cruisers

Why did the Soviet Navy plan sixteen Kynda-class and thirty-five Kresta-class cruisers, then shift toward Kresta II?

It needed globally deployable presence and combat ships, and Kresta II better matched the requirements that emerged as the program evolved.

The planned numbers reflected the number of global stations and task groups Soviet leaders wanted to support. In Soviet usage, a cruiser was less a narrow gun-caliber category than a ship able to deploy worldwide alone or as the center of a group. That made missile cruisers substitutes for some of the presence and command functions a carrier might perform in another navy. The move from the Kynda and early Kresta concepts to Kresta II followed changing operational requirements rather than a mysterious abandonment of a fixed plan. Logistics still limited how independently these ships could act. The segment therefore links classification, force size, and the absence of an established carrier program.