MOSCOW, June 9. /TASS/. The missile cruiser Marshal Ustinov has deployed to the Barents Sea to practice delivering strikes against a notional enemy’s surface ships during drills, the Northern Fleet’s press office reported on Tuesday.

"The cruiser’s crew will practice certain elements of the drills for delivering a missile strike against a group of a notional enemy’s surface ships and also some anti-submarine warfare missions," the press office said in a statement.

Two minesweeping groups provided for the missile cruiser’s deployment to the sea, the press office said.

"The crews of the coastal minesweepers Yelnya, Kolomna, Yadrin, Kotelnich and Solovetsky Yunga practiced mine countermeasures support for the missile cruiser and the task of leading it behind the sweeps," the statement says.

The drills will run amid the deployment of the French Navy’s guided missile frigate Aquitaine to the Barents Sea on June 5. Russia’s National Defense Control Center earlier announced that the Northern Fleet’s forces were tracking the movements of the French frigate in the Barents Sea.

The Marshal Ustinov is the Project 1164 missile cruiser. It was laid down at the Nikolayev Shipyard on October 5, 1978 under the name of the Fleet Admiral Lobov and floated out in 1982. The missile cruiser entered service with the Northern Fleet in 1986 under the name of the Marshal Ustinov.

The missile cruiser is armed with 16 launchers of cruise missiles, and also air defense missile and artillery systems and anti-submarine warfare weapons. The warship underwent its upgrade in Severodvinsk in 2011-2016.