Russia’s new Project 22220 nuclear-powered icebreaker dubbed “Arktika” was launched from the Baltic Shipyard in Russia’s second-largest city of St. Petersburg. Built at the Baltic Shipyard, which belongs to Russia’s United Shipbuilding Corporation, project 22220 is the world’s largest and most powerful vessel of its kind.

The Project 22220 vessel is 189.5 yards long and 37.1 yards wide. The ship displaces 33,540 metric tons. Fitted with two specifically designed RITM-200 nuclear-power reactors, new vessels of this kind will be able to escort convoys in the Arctic, breaking ice up to 10 feet thick and 13 feet deep. Nuclear fuel for the vessel’s RITM-200 nuclear-power reactors is to be produced by the TVEL fuel company by the end of the year.

In 2014, the Baltic Shipyard signed a contract worth 84.4 billion rubles ($1.2 billion) with Rosatom to build two Project 22220 icebreakers by 2020. The ships will be commissioned in December 2019 and December 2020 respectively.

Russia has more than two dozen oceangoing icebreakers, Adm. Paul Zukunft, commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, told NPR’s Jackie Northam last year. Five countries have territorial claims to the Arctic’s lands and waters: the U.S., Russia Canada, Norway and Denmark.