The Russian fleet will have a new Zircon hypersonic cruise missile “in the coming months,” President Vladimir Putin announced on Sunday.
“The Russian fleet is capable of inflicting a withering response on all those who decide to attack our sovereignty and freedom,” Putin said during a naval parade in St. Petersburg. He stressed that Russian military equipment “is constantly being improved.”
The president cited, among others, the “ultramodern Zircon hypersonic missiles that have no obstacles. Its delivery to the Russian armed forces will begin in the coming months,” he said.
With a maximum range of about a thousand kilometers, Zircon cruise missiles are part of a family of new weapons developed by Russia that Putin calls “invincible.” They have been tested since 2020.
According to Putin, the Admiral Gorchkov It will be the first Russian military ship to have these missiles. He added that the ship’s deployment zone would be chosen based on “Russia’s security interests.”
Putin supervised this Sunday the naval parade in Saint Petersburg, which brought together more than 40 ships and submarines and some 3,500 soldiers on the occasion of the Day of the Russian Fleet.
In Sevastopol, in Russian-annexed Crimea, the festivities were canceled after a drone attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet headquarters left six injured.
Local authorities accused the Ukrainians of the attack, but Ukraine denied this.
