The shipyard’s deputy CEO Mikhail Budnichenko ordered the launch and the sub’s commander Captain 1st Class Aleksandr Beketov broke a bottle of champagne over the hull. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and the Navy’s commander Vladimir Korolyov were taking part in the ceremony.

SEVERODVINSK, March 31. /TASS/. Another multipurpose nuclear-powered submarine Kazan has been launched at the Sevmash shipyards in Severodvinsk, a port city in Russia’s White Sea, a TASS correspondent reports from the scene of the event.

"The launch of an advanced multi-role submarine of the improved project Yasen-M is quite an event for the whole of the country, its armed forces and its Navy. We are working together on a plan approved by the government. We are in the process of creating a submarine group capable of coping with missions around the world and maintaining Russia’s security," Admiral Vladimir Korolyov said at the ceremony.

Kazan has been under construction at the Sevmash shipyards since 2009. It is the second in the family and the first upgraded submarine of project 885M. It is to be handed over to the Russian Northern Fleet in 2018.

A total of seven Yasen class submarines are to be built by 2023. The submarines were designed by the St. Petersburg Naval Bureau of Machine-Building Malakhit. The first submarine in the series - Severodvinsk - was delivered on June 17, 2014 and remained in the experimental operation phase till the spring of 2016.

The multirole nuclear powered submarines Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Arkhangelsk and Perm are being built under the improved project Yasen-M. The keel of the seventh submarine will be laid in the summer of 2017.