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Russian Navy to use armed icebreakers in Arctic

The number of weapons on board will depend on the thickness of the ice in a particular area

Ivan Papanin icebreaker Alexander Demianchuk/TASS

Ivan Papanin icebreaker

© Alexander Demianchuk/TASS

MOSCOW, November 14. /TASS/. The Russian Navy will use armed icebreakers in the Arctic. The number of weapons on board will depend on the thickness of the ice in a particular area, an adviser to the CEO of the Krylov State Research Center, Valery Polyakov, told TASS on Thursday on the eve of the center’s 125th anniversary to be marked on November 15.

"There will be ice-breakers and ice-breaking ships, in other words, ships capable of moving at a sufficient speed through ice floes of certain thickness. In fact, they will be armed icebreakers," he said.

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Polyakov explained that the number of weapons on board, on the one hand, and the ability to negotiate ice jams (both parameters require reserving a considerable share of the ship’s mass) on the other, will depend on the Arctic area where they would be used.

"Where the ice is thin, there will be more weapons and the other way round," Polyakov said.

The lead ship for the Arctic - an icebreaker of project 23550 The Ivan Papanin, began to be built at the Admiralty Shipyards (an affiliate of the United Shipbuilding Corporation) on April 19, 2017 and launched on October 25, 2019. It will be armed with one 76 mm or 100 mm artillery piece. The keel-laying ceremony for the first serial ship of this project The Nikolai Zubov will take place at the Admiralty Shipyards by the end of this year.

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