MOSCOW | Russia announced on Thursday that it had deployed planes equipped with state-of-the-art hypersonic missiles to Kaliningrad on Thursday amid heightened tensions around that NATO-backed Russian enclave amid the conflict in Ukraine.
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“As part of the implementation of strategic additional deterrent measures, three MiG-31s with hypersonic Kinjal missiles were transferred to Chkalovsk airfield in the Kaliningrad region,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
The three planes will form a combat unit that will be “operational 24 hours a day,” he added.
The Kinjal (“Dagger” in Russian) hypersonic ballistic missiles and Zircon cruise missiles are among a family of new weapons being developed by Russia that its President Vladimir Putin calls “invincible” for their ability to do so intended to escape the enemy defense systems.
Russia has repeatedly announced that it has used hypersonic missiles in real conditions as part of the major offensive it has been waging in Ukraine since February.
The deployment of these missiles in Kaliningrad, an already heavily militarized area, comes amid a recent showdown between the European Union and Moscow in that Baltic enclave.
In June, in application of EU sanctions adopted in response to the Russian attack on Ukraine, Lithuania stopped authorizing the transit of certain goods through its territory towards Kaliningrad.
Eventually, after protests and threats from Moscow, the EU asked Vilnius to allow the transit of Russian goods by rail, excluding military equipment.
The Kaliningrad region, wedged between Poland and Lithuania, is mostly served by rail from mainland Russia.