Zapad 2025: Russia display its military power with hypersonic rockets and bombers

Russia announced on Sunday that it has launched a Zircon hypersonic cruise missile on a Barents Target and that Suhoi Su-34 supersonic fighter aircraft have made attacks in the common military maneuvers with Belarus “Zapad 2025”.

Russia's common strategic exercise with Belarus began on September 12, aiming to improve the military order and coordination in the event of an attack on Russia or Belarus, the Ministry of Defense in Moscow said.

Authorities in Moscow and Minsk have said that exercises are exclusively defensive and that they do not intend to attack any NATO member, although the military alliance has just announced the “Eastern East” operation, after the recent incursion of Russian drones in Poland.

The Russian Defense Ministry has published images of the Golovko amiral frigate of the northern fleet while launching a zircon hypersonic rocket on a Barents Target. The images showed a rocket launched vertically on the frigate.

“According to the data monitoring data received in real time, the target was destroyed by a direct blow,” says the Russian Ministry.

The Moscow Ministry has also stated that anti-submarine aircraft with a long range of the mixed body of the northern fleet were also involved in the exercise, Agerpres reports. He said that Su-34 crews practiced a bombing on terrestrial targets.

Russian President Vladimir Putin stated in 2019 that the Zircon rocket can fly at a speed nine times higher than that of sound and can hit the sea and land at a distance of over 1,000 km.

Sources of the Russian media say that the rocket, known as the 3m22 zircon in Russia and SS-N-33 of NATO, has an action range of 400 km to 1,000 km, and its focus mass is about 300-400 kg.