KERCH (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th July, 2020) The construction of amphibious assault carriers in Russia will continue after the use of the first two ones shows if any further design modifications are needed, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday.
Putin spoke at a meeting with workers of a local shipyard in the Black Sea coastal city of Kerch in eastern Crimea. Preceding that, he attended a ceremony of floating two new Russian amphibious warships.
"We need it. These are the first of these updated ships. We plan tests and we also plan even more design works, to study how they behave. So yes, we plan to do it, but based on practice of use," Putin said, when asked by one of the workers if Russia planned to build more amphibious ships and helicopter carriers.
The Russian president said that to stimulate shipbuilding in Crimea, the government would subsidize 30 percent of construction costs to ship owners and has allocated to this end 3.8 billion rubles ($53 million) annually until at least 2022.
One of the reasons, according to Putin, is that the cost of building a ship in Crimea is higher than in other Russian shipyards.
