By RIA Novosti
Moscow : India’s Defence Secretary Vijay Singh and the country’s Ambassador to Russia Prabhat Shukla have inspected aircraft carrier the Admiral Gorshkov, being overhauled for the Indian Navy, at the Sevmash Shipyard in northern Russia’s Severodvinsk city.
Mikhail Starozhilov, head of the Sevmash press service, said the Indian officials discussed with Sevmash managers various aspects of the carrier’s modernization, inspected the carrier and the shipyard’s hull-welding workshop.
He said a large delegation of the Indian Navy, due to arrive in Severodvinsk this March, would assess aspects of the modernization of the aircraft carrier.
The carrier, renamed the Vikramaditya, will replace India’s currently operational carrier INS Viraat, which is now 50 years old.
In 2004, Moscow and New Delhi signed a contract for the refitting and modernisation of the aircraft named in honour of former commander-in-chief of the Soviet Navy Servei Gorshkov.
Under the contract, the Indian Navy was to have received the warship in 2008.