Northern Fleet ship crews drilled sea-borne landing on the shore of an Arctic island captured by an “enemy,” the Fleet’s Press Service reports.

A squadron of combat ships led by an antisubmarine warfare ship, Severomorsk, held tactical exercises on Alexandra Land, an island in the Franz Joseph Land archipelago, drilling a sea-borne landing on an unequipped coast. The Northern Fleet force had to win back a jumping-off ground occupied by illegal armed groups and ensure the landing of an assault party.

According to the Press Service, a group trained to fight underwater sabotage forces reconnoitered the terrain in a post-landing raid, whereupon Severomorsk fired its AK-100 guns at the aggressor’s positions and a Kamov Ka-27 deck-pad helicopter airlifted a unit of Marines.    

After they organized on-shore positions, an assault landing ship, Alexander Otrakovsky, approached the coastline and landed two-section all-terrain vehicles with Marines on board and a UR-77 self-propelled mine clearing rocket system that made a passage in the minefields.