Russia To Launch Missiles And Tests For Pacific Fleet Torpedoes, Defense Minister Shoigu: Increase The Ability To Repel Enemy Aggression

Presidents Vladimir Putin and Sergei Shoigu on Russian Navy Day. (Wikimedia Commons/Kremlin.ru)

JAKARTA - Russia will launch missile launches and torpedo tests as part of a surprise inspection of its Pacific naval fleet, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Friday.

The drills were carried out amid rising tensions in the Asia-Pacific region, as the United States and South Korea conducted joint air exercises after North Korea's intercontinental ballistic missile test.

"The main objective of this inspection is to enhance the Armed Forces' ability to repel possible enemy aggression from the sea and sea," Shoigu said on state television.

Meanwhile, Russia's Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov said the country's navy would be highly alerted during training and deployed to training areas, where they would conduct combat exercises.

The drills will also simulate enemy landings on Russia's Sakhalin Island and in the southern Kuril Islands, some of which are claimed by Japan in territorial disputes since the end of the Second World War.

Asked about the drills, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov played down any relationship with regional tensions.

"This is a common practice, it has been carried out continuously in recent years and continues. It is about maintaining the necessary level of combat readiness of our armed forces," Peskov explained at a daily press conference.

In another recent military activity in the region, the Russian navy fired a supersonic anti-ship missile at an artificial target in the Japanese Sea on March 28.

Russia was also known to have flown two strategic bombers over the Sea of Japan for more than seven hours earlier in March, just as Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida began a visit to Ukraine to show solidarity with Kyiv in its war against the invasion of Russian troops.