Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images/TNS

Russia is conducting a large-scale military exercise to train its nuclear forces while President Vladimir Putin visits Beijing for discussions with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The three days of drills will involve more than 64,000 troops, 200 missile launchers, 140 aircraft, 73 surface ships and 13 submarines, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement Tuesday without specifying the number of missile launches it planned. Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces, Northern and Pacific Fleets and Long-Range Aviation Command are set to take part, News.Az reports, citing The Spokesman-Review.

“This is a relatively large-scale exercise,” said Dmitry Stefanovich, a research fellow at the Center for International Security at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow. “The purpose is strategic signaling: a reminder that direct military confrontation with a nuclear power cannot be won.”

The exercises underscore the Kremlin’s desire to remind the world of its atomic capabilities as Ukraine has been increasing the number of long-range strikes into Russia. The drills, which will also focus on training for weapons deployed in neighboring Belarus, were announced after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned last week that Russia may be preparing to get Minsk’s forces more involved in its war on Ukraine.

Belarus said on Monday, that the “planned training event” was not directed at third parties and “poses no threat to the security of the region.”

Moscow deployed tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, which borders three NATO member states, in 2023, followed by the long-range Oreshnik missile in 2025. Longtime President Alexander Lukashenko allowed Russia to use Belarus’s territory as a launchpad for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

With Putin set to meet with Xi on Wednesday, after the Chinese leader held summit talks with U.S. President Donald Trump last week, he’ll be notably outside the country during much of the nuclear exercise.

Putin took part by video link in exercises by Russia’s strategic forces in October. In 2024, Russia held nuclear drills a week before the U.S. presidential election, boasting of improved capabilities that can penetrate air defenses. During that exercise, Russia fired intercontinental ballistic missiles and launched ballistic missiles.

Last week, Putin said his country would deploy its nuclear-capable Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile by the end of the year, following what Moscow said was a successful test of the weapon.

News.Az 

By Ulviyya Salmanli