The Russian military on Wednesday conducted sweeping drills of its strategic nuclear forces that featured several practice missile launches.
The Defense Ministry said in a statement that the maneuvers included the test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile from the Karelia nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea.
As part of the drills, a ground-based intercontinental ballistic missile was also launched from the Plesetsk facility in northwestern Russia and Tu-160 and Tu-95 strategic bombers fired cruise missiles at test targets.
Russia has expanded its military drills in recent years amid tensions with the West as relations plummeted to post-Cold War lows after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
The war games come less than two months before the New START US-Russian arms control treaty expires in early February. Moscow and Washington have discussed extending the pact, but differences have remained.
New START was signed in 2010 by then-US President Barack Obama and then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. It limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers, and envisages sweeping on-site inspections to verify compliance
After both Moscow and Washington withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty last year, New START is the only remaining nuclear arms control deal between the two countries still standing.
{{/usCountry}}After both Moscow and Washington withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty last year, New START is the only remaining nuclear arms control deal between the two countries still standing.
{{/usCountry}}Arms control advocates have warned that its expiration would remove any checks on US and Russian nuclear forces, in a blow to global stability.