The Russian military has said that it received its first batch of a new missile system equipped to fight in the Arctic.

The Russian Defense Ministry has worked at breakneck pace to reassert its armed presence in the Arctic frontier by reopening old defense installations and deploying weaponry in the region.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced Sunday it had received a batch of Tor-M2DT surface-to-air missile systems designed for the Arctic region. The system was first unveiled at a Victory Day parade on Red Square in 2017.

“Experts with the Russian Defense Ministry’s 705th military office carried out a cycle of acceptance tests and fully completed the reception of the first 12 Arctic Tor-M2DT systems,” it told state-run news agencies Monday.

The Tor-M2DT system is capable of detecting up to 40 moving aerial targets at a range of 15 kilometers and altitudes of 12 kilometers.

A military doctrine signed by President Vladimir Putin in 2014 entrusts Russia’s armed forces with maintaining the country’s strategic interests in the Arctic.

Russia renewed commercial interest in the Arctic with the discovery of oil and gas reserves in the region and the ambition to secure access to a strategic northern shipping corridor between Asia and Europe.

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