The Russian Defence Ministry has dismissed reports about an "abnormal situation" during the Grom strategic military exercises.
"After evaluating the information on the technical condition of one of the Ryazan submarine’s missiles, obtained immediately before the launch, the decision was made not to fire it... The cancellation of the missile launch did not affect the successful results of the Grom command post exercise", it said.
Russia's Grom 2019 drills are aimed at checking combat control, not the ability to conduct a maximum number of missile launches, the ministry noted.
The ministry said the drills included missile launches from submarines, ships, the Yars and Iskander systems, and long-range bombers.
It said Russian submarines had successfully fired Kalibr cruise missiles at targets in Kamchatka and the Arkhangelsk Region.
Earlier in the day, Russian newspaper Vedomosti reported, citing two sources, that an emergency had happened during the Grom 2019 strategic exercises.
According to the media outlet, on 17 October, the Russian nuclear-powered submarine K-44 Ryazan fired only one ballistic missile into the Chizha test range instead of the two that had been announced by the Russian military before the launch. The Defence Ministry in turn claimed that the tasks stipulated during the training of the strategic deterrence forces had been fully implemented, and all missiles hit their targets, confirming the specified characteristics.
