BEIJING (Dispatches) -- A Russian warship armed with new-generation hypersonic cruise weapons will participate in joint exercises with the navies of China and South Africa in February, Russian state agency TASS said on Monday.
It was the first official mention of the participation by the frigate, “Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Gorshkov,” which is armed with Zircon missiles.
The missiles fly at nine times the speed of sound, with a range of more than 1,000 km (620 miles), Russia says. They form the centerpiece of its hypersonic arsenal, along with the Avangard glide vehicle that entered combat duty in 2019.
“’Admiral Gorshkov’ ... will go to the logistic support point in Syria’s Tartus, and then take part in joint naval exercises with the Chinese and South African navies,” the agency said, citing an unidentified defense source.
On Thursday, the South African National Defense Force said the drills, to run from Feb. 17 to Feb. 27 near the port city of Durban and Richards Bay, aim “to strengthen the already flourishing relations between South Africa, Russia and China.”
The exercise will be the second involving the three countries in South Africa, after a drill in 2019, the defense force added in its statement.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was in South Africa on Monday, to hold talks with one of his country’s most important allies.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government regards South Africa as neutral in the Ukraine conflict, and has expressed a desire to mediate.
Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor has repeatedly insisted that South Africa will not be dragged into taking sides, and has criticized the West for its selective condemnation of Russia while ignoring other acts of aggression like the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
The “Gorshkov” held exercises in the Norwegian Sea this month after President Vladimir Putin sent it to the Atlantic Ocean in a signal to the West that Russia would not back down over the war in Ukraine.
Russia sees the weapons as a way to pierce increasingly sophisticated U.S. missile defenses that Putin has warned could one day shoot down its nuclear missiles.
China, Russia and the United States are in a race to develop hypersonic weapons, seen as a way to gain an edge over any adversary because of their speeds, greater than five times that of sound and because they are harder to detect.