MOSCOW, December 21. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree equaling the Northern Fleet to a military district from 2021, according to the document posted on the government’s legal information web portal on Monday.

"To consider the Northern Fleet as a multiservice force strategic territorial association of the Russian Armed Forces performing the tasks of a military district," the decree says.

The document has been adopted "for the purpose of implementing measures for protecting the integrity and inviolability of the territory" of Russia, it says.

The decree will enter into force on January 1, 2021.

On July 5 this year, Putin signed a decree on Russia’s military and administrative division, which actually assigns the Northern Fleet the status of a military district from January 1, 2021. It is based on the territory of the Republic of Komi, the Arkhangelsk and Murmansk Regions and the Nenets Autonomous Region. Pursuant to the Russian president’s 2010 decree, these regions were part of the Western Military District.

Today the Northern Fleet is the Russian Navy’s operational and strategic association. It deals with the tasks of keeping the seaborne strategic nuclear forces on constant alert for the purposes of nuclear deterrence.

The Northern Fleet’s main naval base of Severomorsk is located in the Murmansk Region. It also has naval bases in Vidyayevo, Gadzhiyevo, Gremikha, Zapadnaya Litsa and Polyarny (all of them based in the Murmansk Region) and also operates the Belomorsk naval facility in Severodvinsk in the northern Arkhangelsk Region. Admiral Alexander Moiseyev is currently the Northern Fleet’s commander.