You're reading: Viktor Sevostyanov: Russia to deploy more S-400 air defense systems in Crimea

FEODOSIA – Russia plans to deploy more S-400 ‘Triumph’ air defense missile systems in Crimea, Lieut. Gen. Viktor Sevostyanov, the commander of the 4th Air Force and Air Defense Forces Army, said in an interview.

“Surely, this is planned. I wouldn’t talk about dates so far,” Sevostyanov told journalists in Feodosia on Saturday when asked whether additional S-400 systems could be deployed in Crimea.

An air defense regiment armed with a battalion of S-400 systems and its command station were put on combat duty in Crimea on Saturday.

The air defense unit stationed in Feodosia will continue to use S-300 systems, Sevostyanov said. “The S-300 system has not been put off combat duty in this regiment. It is still on combat duty,” he said.

With the S-400 on duty, the Crimean air defense system’s combat potential will be significantly higher, Sevostyanov said. “This system can simultaneously track and destroy up to 300 aerial and ground-based targets operating across the entire range of speeds and altitudes,” Sevostyanov said.

The S-400 system that has been put on combat duty in Crimea is capable of tracking and destroying targets made with the use of the stealth technology, Sevostyanov said.

“Planes, missiles, and other aerial objects made based on the stealth technology are not invisible. Perhaps the distance at which they can be detected will be shorter, but this won’t be critical: the target will certainly be detected, fired upon and destroyed if it threatens the Russian Federation,” Sevostyanov said.

The press service of Russia’s Southern Military District had told Interfax on Friday that an S-400 surface-to-air missile system had entered the inventory of the Sevastopol-Feodosia air defense missile regiment in 2016.

The regiment’s personnel were successfully retrained for S-400 systems and practiced their launches last August as part of the Caucasus 2016 exercise, it said.

The Russian military first demonstrated an S-400 system in Crimea along with a Pantsir-S combined surface-to-air missile and antiaircraft artillery weapon complex during an event organized by the Russian Defense Ministry in Kerch to recruit professional servicemen on November 19, 2016.