The president tries to hide his limited progress in Ukraine with the announcement of a new naval doctrine and equipping his ships with the ultramodern ‘Tsirkon’ projectile, which flies “at a speed nine times greater than that of sound”
Faced with the break suffered by his Army in Ukraine, which has spent more than a month with hardly any progress in Donbas after the seizure of Lisichansk (Lugansk) on July 3, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has decided to encourage his citizens by throwing hand once again of the ultramodern hypersonic missiles and the apparent power of its Navy.
For this, Putin took advantage of the celebration of Navy Day, a traditional event in St. Petersburg every last Sunday of July, when he also signed before the cameras, in the city’s Museum of History, the decree that includes the new Russian naval doctrine , a very unusual gesture in the framework of a parade.
It so happens that the Russian Navy is not currently experiencing its best moment. Its role in the conflict with Ukraine is being more than modest, with occasional missile fire at very long range, even from the Caspian Sea, for fear of coming within range of kyiv’s coastal defense rockets. The majestic cruiser ‘Moskva’, which was the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, can attest to this from the depths. The ship was hit by two Ukrainian ‘Neptun’ missiles when it was off the coast of Odessa on April 14.
In addition, the Black Sea Fleet could not even prevent the strategic Snake Island from falling back into the hands of Ukraine on June 30. Gone is the image of supremacy that the Russian squadron managed to convey when, in the summer of 2021, it intimidated and almost put to flight several NATO ships that had approached its territorial waters in the Black Sea.
But Putin promises to turn this situation around by equipping his ships with ‘Tsirkon’ hypersonic missiles and reinforcing the potential of his Navy to be able to expand his domains in all the world’s seas, especially those that are part of what he considers his zone. of interests.
The Russian Navy «carries out strategic tasks with success and honor on the borders of our country and in any area of the world oceans, has a high preparation for carrying out coastal, surface, air and underwater actions that are constantly perfected. constant”, assured the Russian president a week ago in his speech on the occasion of the great naval parade in the former Russian imperial capital.
According to Putin, “it is enough to mention the latest ‘Tsirkon’ hypersonic missile systems, which have no analogues in the world and for which there are no barriers (…) their delivery to the Russian Armed Forces will begin in the coming months.” In his opinion, the Navy “is capable of inflicting a swift response on all those who decide to attack our sovereignty and freedom” and specified that the first ship to be equipped with these invincible rockets will be the frigate ‘Admiral Gorshkov’, attached to the North Sea Fleet and from which the trials of the new weapon have been carried out.
areas of interest
Putin announced that in his new decree on the Naval Doctrine of the Russian Federation «we have openly defined the limits and areas of Russia’s interests, both vital economic and strategic. We refer first of all to our Arctic waters, those of the Black, Azov, Okhotsk and Bering seas, the straits in the Baltic and the Kuriles (…) whose defense we will firmly guarantee and using all available means’, including nuclear weapons.
The head of the Kremlin explained that the new conception of naval security is due to the “threat” that, according to him, the United States and NATO pose to Russia, a statement that already includes the Russian Military Doctrine as a whole. The document signed by Putin recognizes the “strategic weakness” of his country in terms of naval bases, which is why it provides for the creation of some new ones in its own territory, especially in the Arctic, but also “in the Asian region”. -Pacific and in the Mediterranean Sea”, without specifying in which countries. In Syria, he already has a base in Tartus, piers in Cuba and Venezuela, and there are ongoing negotiations to open a base in Sudan.
Russia has four fleets: the North Sea fleet in Severomorsk and around Murmansk, the Pacific fleet in Vladivostok, the Baltic Sea fleet in Baltiisk, Kaliningrad and Kronstadt, and the Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol and Novorossiisk. It also has a flotilla in the Caspian Sea with bases in Astrakhan and Makhachkala.
The new Naval Doctrine includes the list of all the ships of the Russian Navy, in total, according to official figures, 270, of which 68 are submarines: 48 atomic-powered submersibles (13 armed with ballistic missiles, 27 armed with other rockets and torpedoes, in addition to 8 for “special missions”, including the huge ‘Belgorod’). The Russian Navy also has 20 diesel-powered submarines. According to the Defense Ministry, eight more ships will enter service this year.
“invincible” weapons
In his speech on the State of the Nation before the two Chambers of the Russian Parliament delivered on March 1, 2018, Putin assured that the ‘Tsirkon’ can fly “at a speed nine times greater than the speed of sound, has a range of more of a thousand kilometers and can hit both land and sea targets. The speed considered hypersonic must be five times higher than that of sound, above 5,000 kilometers per hour.
In that speech four and a half years ago, the head of the Kremlin declared that his country would strengthen its war potential with new “unpublished” ultra-modern weapons, “invincible” and unrivaled in the world. He named the intercontinental missiles ‘Sarmat’, impossible to intercept, he argued, by not using ballistic trajectory. Russian Navy submarines will include them in their armament. He also referred to other hypersonic missiles, the ‘Avangard’ and the ‘Kinzhal’, currently in service.
Both the ‘Tsirkon’, the ‘Avangard’ and the ‘Kinzhal’ can be armed with a nuclear or conventional warhead. He also mentioned the fearsome unmanned mini-submarine ‘Poseidon’, in reality a torpedo with a multi-megaton nuclear warhead, capable of causing a radioactive tsunami of such intensity that, according to the Russian press, it could completely sweep the coasts of countries such as the US or the UK and render them uninhabitable for decades. The ‘Poseidon’ will go aboard the immense ‘Belgorod’ submarine, currently the longest in the world.
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