The vessel was laid down at Sevmash Shipyard in Severodvinsk outside Arkhangelsk on March 19, the day of submariners. Deputy State Minister in charge of defense industry Dmitri Rogozin and Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy Viktor Chirkov attended the ceremony, the Ministry of Defense’s web site reads.
Russia plans to build a total of 12 Yasen-class submarines by 2020. The first vessel of the class, “Severodvinsk”, was commissioned in December 2013, and is now based at the Northern Fleet’s base in Zapadnaya Litsa fjord on the Barents Sea coast of the Kola Peninsula, only 60 kilometers from the border to Norway.
Three submarines are already under construction: “Kazan”, “Novosibirsk” and “Krasnoyarsk”. All the submarines built after the prototype “Severodvinsk” have been modified and go by the name of Yasen-M. They are estimated to be the quietest, or least detectable, of all Russian nuclear submarines. The vessels will be equipped exclusively with Russian-made electronic warfare systems and other elements.
