News / Russia

Russian troops will get new generation of S-350 Vityaz missile system in 2019: Ministry

Sunday, 30 December 2018 6:52 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 30 December 2018 7:19 PM ]

This file photo shows a 50P6 missile launcher of the S-350E system at 2013 MAKS international air show in Russia.

The Russian military says it will deploy the new generation of S-350 Vityaz short-to-mid range surface-to-air defense missile system next year.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced the news in a statement on Saturday, saying the military had already deployed Pantsir-S and S-400 complexes in 2018 in Crimea, which rejoined Russia in a 2014 referendum from Ukraine.

“In 2019, the Aerospace Forces will receive the brand-new missile system, S-350 Vityaz, for the first time ever,” the statement reads, as Russia tries to replace its ageing S-300 system in a long-planned move.

Vityaz (Knight) is developed by Almaz-Antey Air and Space Defence Corporation.

The ministry further said that Pantsir-S and S-400 Triumf long-range air defense weapons had also been stationed in Russia’s Arctic region, the Kaliningrad exclave on the Baltic Sea, and in its easternmost Khabarovsk region, earlier this year.

On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin praised his military forces for carrying out a successful test launch of the cutting-edge Avangard hypersonic missile system, saying that Russia would deploy its first regiment of hypersonic nuclear-capable missiles next year.

PressTV-Putin hails test of Avangard hypersonic missile

The Russian president says the hypersonic system was successfully tested on his order and will enter service next year.

Avangard’s test comes 16 years after former US President George W. Bush abandoned the 1972 the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, which banned the US and the Soviet Union from developing more than two ABM complexes at the same time.

Russia is planning to modernize its strategic and conventional weapons in reaction to US President Donald Trump’s threats to withdraw from the Soviet-era Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, signed in 1986 between then US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev.

The pact bans the two sides from developing land-based missile systems ranging from 310 to 3,400 miles.

The US president said on October 20 that Washington would pull out of the INF over the claim that Moscow had violated the pact. Russia has rejected that claim.

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