A Russian warship armed with hypersonic cruise weapons held exercises in the Norwegian Sea, the defence ministry said on Tuesday. According to the ministry, an air defence exercise was performed by the crew of the frigate ‘Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Gorshkov’ in the Norwegian Sea.
In the Norwegian Sea, ‘the crew undertook an exercise to repel the means of an air attack of a simulated enemy.’
The frigate had been despatched to the Atlantic Ocean last week by President Vladimir Putin. It is equipped with Zircon missiles, a new generation of hypersonic cruise missiles. The move appears to be a signal from Russia to the West that it will not give in to pressure over the conflict in Ukraine.
Russia says the Zircon missiles can fly at nine times the speed of sound and have a range of over 1,000 km (620 miles).
Moscow touts the weapons as a way to pierce increasingly sophisticated US missile defences. Putin has warned that these defences can one day shoot down Russian nuclear missiles. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last week warned the United States that the hypersonic missiles would soon be close to NATO’s shores.
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