TASS-FACTBOX. On April 24, 2026, A new seafaring minesweeper, the Dmitry Glukhov, was laid down at the Sredne-Nevsky Shipyard of Russia’s United Shipbuilding Corporation in St. Petersburg. It is the sixteenth ship of Project 12700 laid down this year. The TASS-FACTBOX editorial team has prepared a report on the ships of this class.
Project 12700 (Alexandrit) minesweepers are a new generation of mine countermeasure ships designed and being built for the Russian Navy. They are designed to search for, sweep, and destroy mines in coastal areas and in the near-sea zone.
The project was developed in the 1990s by the Almaz Central Marine Design Bureau (St. Petersburg). The need to build a new series arose because the Russian Navy’s then-current minesweepers (Projects 266M and 12650) were built in the 1970s and 1980s, and their equipment was no longer capable of effectively neutralizing modern mines.
Project 12700 minesweepers are equipped with an automated control system, contact and magnetic sweeps, and modern sonar systems, which are mounted both on the ship itself and on remotely operated and autonomous vehicles.
The ships have a monolithic fiberglass hull formed using vacuum infusion. They are being built at the Sredne-Nevsky Shipyard (a subsidiary of the United Shipbuilding Corporation, USC).
