"Under the leadership of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, a training exercise of the strategic nuclear forces was carried out involving their land, sea, and air elements," the statement said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the nuclear command exercise was a scheduled drill.
“Today we have a planned nuclear forces training,” he said from the Kremlin’s situation center before issuing the order to begin.
The Kremlin reported that Russia’s strategic nuclear forces drill assessed the readiness of military command structures and the operational skills of personnel responsible for troop control.
As part of the exercise, a Yars intercontinental ballistic missile was launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome toward the Kura range in Kamchatka. The drill also included air-launched cruise missile tests by Tu-95MS strategic bombers, and a Sineva ballistic missile launch from the Bryansk submarine in the Barents Sea.
According to the Kremlin, all objectives of the exercise were successfully achieved under the supervision of President Vladimir Putin.