Moscow
\nRussia has celebrated Navy Day by holding a traditional maritime parade in St. Petersburg, which involved thousands of service members and more than 200 vessels.
\nThe parade, which takes place every year on the last Sunday of July, was overseen by President Vladimir Putin, Defense Minister Andrey Belousov, and Commander-in-Chief of the Navy Aleksandr Moiseyev.
\nThe celebrations were joined by sailors from Russia\u2019s Northern, Pacific, Baltic fleets, Caspian flotilla, as well as members of the naval force deployed in Syria. Ships from the Black Sea Fleet were absent from the parade due to still being engaged in active operations in the Ukraine conflict.
\nA total of 15,000 service members, as well as more than 200 ships of various classes and over one hundred units of other military equipment, took part in the parade. Also taking part were Chinese, Indian and Algerian warships.
\nThe parade is traditionally led by the Poltava, a reconstructed 18th century 54-gun sailing ship. The original ship, launched in 1712, was given its name in commemoration of Russia\u2019s crushing victory over Sweden at the Battle of Poltava in 1709, which turned the tide of the Great Northern War and paved the way for Russia to become a major world power.
\nOther more modern warships included several small-sized missile ships and corvettes, which are typically armed with Kalibr cruise missiles capable of hitting targets at a range of more than 1,000km.
\nThe parade featured a patrol icebreaker, the \u2018Ivan Papanin\u2019, a type of vessel specifically designed for Arctic conditions. Russia currently possesses the largest icebreaker fleet in the world, numbering more than 40 vessels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Moscow Russia has celebrated Navy Day by holding a traditional maritime parade in St. Petersburg, which involved thousands of service members and more than 200 vessels. The parade, which takes place every year on the last Sunday of July, was overseen by President Vladimir Putin, Defense Minister Andrey Belousov, and Commander-in-Chief of the Navy Aleksandr […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421386,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-421353","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n