New air defense missile systems will be put on combat duty around Moscow in late August, a senior air defense commander said Thursday.

"We are expecting to receive S-400 systems in July-August, and put them on combat duty to protect the airspace around the capital at the end of August," Colonel-General Yury Solovyov, commander of the Air Defense Forces Special Command, was quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency as saying.

The general said that the system could be also used for limited purposes in missile and space defense, but it is not intended to destroy intercontinental ballistic missiles.

However, he said the system is highly capable of destroying stealth aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles with an effective range of up to 3,500 km and a speed of up to 4.8 km per second.

The Russian Air Defense Forces currently deploy more than 30 regiments equipped with S-300 missile complexes, which will be gradually replaced with S-400 systems.

The S-400 Triumph is a new air defense missile system developed by the Almaz Central Design Bureau as an upgrade of the S-300 family. "It surpasses the existing S-300 by jamming resistance, target handling channels and shooting at high-speed targets," Solovyov said.

The S-400 Triumph has been designed to intercept and destroy airborne targets at a distance of up to 400 km, or twice the range of the MIM-104 Patriot, and 2.5 times that of the S-300PMU-2.