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Russia has finished reconstructing a military airfield near Sevastopol, the Republic of Crimea.
On December 24th, the Russian Ministry of Defense’s newspaper Red Star cited Lieutenant General Viktor Sevostyanov, the commander of the Southern Military District Air Force and Air Defense, who said that a Su-30M2 fighter jet had landed on the reconstructed runway.
The commander personally inspected the Belbek airfield to ensure its operational readiness.
A pair of fighter jets made a flight from Krymsk (Krasnodar Territory) to the Belbek airfield as part of the first technical flight after the completion of the first stage of the airfield reconstruction.
Military pilots tested the improved infrastructure and the work of the ground engineering services.
“We looked at the condition of the runway, the fulfillment of certain standards – everything related to landing, taxiing and so on. The airfield is wonderful,” Sevostyanov said.
The commander also noted that the reconstruction began in the spring of 2018 and its related to its status of an airfield that can service both military and civil aircraft.
“In the state in which it was in the spring, the airfield could not accept all types of civil aircraft for a number of reasons, including the state of the runway,” the commander said.
The new strip of the airfield is 500 m longer than the old one and meets international standards. The construction of the new runway was completed in November and it has a total length of 3450 m. Work is still on going, but the airfield can now accept all kinds of aircraft.
When the reconstruction is finalized, a regiment of 24 airplanes is to be based at Belbek.
Furthermore, on December 18th, Defense Ministry officials at an end of the year review meeting confirmed that Russia completed rearming air defense forces in Crimea with its advanced S-400 Triumf surface-to-air missile systems.
“This year, we have completed rearming air defense units stationed in Crimea with the S-400 Triumph systems. Today they are on combat duty, reliably protecting the airspace over the entire Crimean Peninsula,” the Commander of the Southern Military District, Colonel-General Alexander Dvornikov said.
Following the November 25th incident between the Ukrainian Navy and the Russian Coast Guard south of the Kerch Strait, Russia publicized an additional deployment of the S-400 systems as well as coastal defense equipment. With the most recent S-400 deployment, Crimea has 4 state-of-the-art systems, the other three have been deployed since 2017.
Russia’s military has called it a “combat” deployment toward “neutralizing possible threats.” On December 18th, Commander Dvornikov said:
“For the purposes of neutralizing possible threats, the troops of the Southern Military District continued accomplishing their combat duty tasks to provide for air defense of Russia’s southern frontiers and protect its allies in the airspace in the troops’ entire zone of responsibility.”
