According to the aggressor’s Ministry of Defense on May 13, at a ceremony in Baltiysk, the “newest missile corvette” Mercury was formally accepted into the Russian Navy, which allegedly “will replenish the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation with a base in Sevastopol”.
Corvette is the fifth project 20380 ship built at “Severnaya Verf”, and after launching in 2020, it was undergoing “finishing and acceptance” in the Baltic. It should be noted that this series of vessels has been under construction since 2001, and as of May 2023, up to 10 corvettes have been built, of which 4 each are part of the Baltic and Pacific fleets.
Under the current conditions, while Russian naval aggression continues in the Black Sea, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles are closed for the Mercury, as well as for other aggressor ships, so further provocations by the Kremlin, including in Baltic.
It is also noteworthy that by renaming this ship in 2021 from “Retivyi” (“Zealous”) to “Mercury”, the aggressor clearly wants to “hush up” the situation with the ships of project 20383 “Mercury”, from the construction of which, allegedly with “Stealth technologies”, Russian Federation was forced to abandon in 2020.
