Russia's nuclear-powered icebreaker Ural is expected to be floated out in St. Petersburg in late May 2019, according to the Baltic Shipyard's press service on Thursday.
Ural is one of Russia's Project 22220 icebreakers, which are the world's largest and most powerful vessels of their kind, fitted with two specifically designed RITM-200 nuclear-power reactors. The new vessels will be able to escort convoys in the Arctic and break up thick ice.
In 2012, Rosatomflot and the Baltic Shipyard started to build Russia's first nuclear icebreaker Arktika, which is scheduled to be put into commission in mid-2019. Arktika and Sibir have already been launched, and Ural is currently being constructed in the shipyard, which will be launched in May 2019 and ready for use in 2021.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov said in July that Russia has planned to place two additional requests for Project 22220 nuclear-powered icebreakers, thus bringing the total number of ship orders to five.
A detachment of warships and support vessels of the Russian Northern Fleet left their main base on Wednesday and headed for the eastern Arctic on a safety mission, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
The detachment consists of a large anti-submarine ship, two large amphibious assault ships, a mine sweeper, an icebreaker, a tanker, a rescue tug and a crane ship.
The group will travel along the Northern Sea Route, most of which is currently ice-free. The main goal of the long-distance mission is to check the safety of maritime navigation and other marine economic activities in the Arctic.
During the mission, sailors will be trained to perform search and rescue operations and provide assistance to civil ships suffering disasters.
This is the seventh large-scale mission of the Northern Fleet in the Arctic since 2012, when its marines for the first time in the history of the Russian Navy landed on a distant Arctic island.
