MOSCOW, May 20. /TASS/. Over 40 combat ships, vessels and submarines will take part in Russia’s Main Naval Parade in St. Petersburg on Navy Day that will be celebrated on July 26 this year, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said at the ministry’s board meeting on Wednesday.
"We will begin the board meeting with a review of the preparations for holding the Main Naval Parade in St. Petersburg scheduled for July 26. The parade will involve 46 combat ships and submarines of all the fleets, including the most advanced vessels that are entering service now," the defense chief said.
The first serial-produced frigate Admiral Kasatonov, the large amphibious assault ship Pyotr Morgunov, the submarine Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and other combat ships will take part in the parade, the defense minister specified.
"As a sign of recognizing the Russian Fleet’s big contribution to the exploration of the World Ocean, two latest hydrographic survey vessels will sail along the Neva River together with combat ships. The oceanic survey vessel Admiral Vladimirsky, which is currently completing a scientific expedition to the Antarctic shores together with the Russian Geographical Society, will anchor in the Kronshtadt roadstead," Shoigu said.
In honor of the 75th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War, combat boats with the banners of the Navy’s glorious formations will sail along the Neva. The parade’s historical part will envisage the passage of amphibious assault boats with a legendary T-34 tank and a BM-13 Katyusha multiple rocket launcher, the defense chief said.
Apart from St. Petersburg, the naval parades will be held in all the Russian Navy’s fleets: in Severomorsk, Baltiysk, Vladivostok and Sevastopol, and also at Russia’s Tartus naval facility on the Mediterranean coast in Syria, Shoigu specified.
For the first time, Russia’s Caspian Flotilla will hold the naval parade at its new base in the city of Kaspiysk.