MOSCOW, Aug 23:
Russia and India are soon expected to finalise two frigates of project 11356, for the Indian Navy, which the Baltic shipyard Yantar began to build for the Black Sea Fleet.
“Two ships will be built for India and one, equipped with new gas turbine power plants, for the Russian Navy,” the vice-president of the United Shipbuilding Corporation for naval shipbuilding, Igor Ponomaryov, told Tass news agency on Wednesday.
Ponomaryov added that the future of a second troika of project 11356 frigates being built at the Yantar shipyard was determined under a Russian-Indian Inter-Governmental Agreement.
“We hope that when this work is over (three ships of project 11356 ), the Russian Navy will order at least another two frigates of this project,” he said.
Currently negotiations are underway on providing to India four project 11356 frigates. Earlier, the director of the Rostec corporation for regional cooperation and regional policies, Viktor Kladov, said the yet-to-be concluded contracts would be based on the two plus two formula: two frigates will be built in Russia and provided to India in finished form, while another two will be built at one of India’s shipyards.
The federal service for military-technical cooperation later said the Yantar shipyard in Kaliningrad and India’s Goa Shipyard would be involved in the project. Project 11356 ships have a displacement of about 4,000 tonnes, speed of up to 30 knots and endurance of 30 days. Three such ships have been built for the Black Sea Fleet already. (UNI)