MOSCOW (Sputnik) — First operational service of Russia's next-generation Arktika nuclear-powered icebreaker is expected in mid-2019, Atomflot state unitary enterprise Director General Vyacheslav Ruksha said Tuesday.
"We hope for the first half of 2019," Ruksha said of the Project 22220 icebreaker at the Russian Engineering Union's shipbuilding committee session.
The Arktika, the first project 22220 class ship and the first nuclear icebreaker to be fully built in modern-day Russia, was successfully launched at the Baltic Shipyard in St. Petersburg in June 2016.