Russian navy to flash nuclear power in Baltic Sea

The warships will take part in the Navy Parade at the island of Kronstad just outside St. Petersburg on July 30, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reports.

In addition to «Pyotr Velikiy» and nuclear powered submarines, more than 30 surface warships and 40 planes and helicopters will join in for the parade.

The Navy Day in late July is an annual event where President Vladimir Putin normally participate. The main parade has earlier been arranged in Severomorsk where the Northern fleet has its headquarters. In 2014, some few months after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, the main naval parade took place in Sevastopol, the base of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

In the Baltic, where the navy sails vessels from both St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad, no nuclear powered vessels are based. 

«Pyotr Velikiy» and several of Russia’s older nuclear powered submarines are, however, built at naval yards in St. Petersburg. The battle cruiser has not been in the Baltic since she sailed out on her maiden voyage towards the Barents Sea in late 1996.

The Russian navy’s nuclear powered submarines are also seldom sailing the Baltic Sea.

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On their way to this summer’s naval parade outside St. Petersburg, the nuclear powered battle cruiser and submarines will have to sail along the coast of Norway through the Öresund strait between Denmark and Sweden heading north to the Baltic Sea east of Gotland and west of the Baltic States before sailing east south of Finland and north of Estonia.

«Pyotr Velikiy» is powered by two nuclear reactors and carries a wide-range of weapons including cruise-missiles and several types of surface-to-air missiles, torpedoes and rocket launchers. 

The announcement do not details which of the Northern fleet’s nuclear powered submarines that will take part.