The exercises took place in areas bordering Nato member states, including Finland, Norway, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, news agency Reuters reports.
Russia announced on Wednesday that soldiers and sailors from its northern Leningrad Military District participated in drills to deploy tactical nuclear weapons, according to news agency Reuters.
The exercises took place in areas bordering Nato member states, including Finland, Norway, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said the drills were in response to signals from Western leaders that they would allow Ukraine to target Russia with Western-supplied weapons.
“The personnel of the Leningrad Military District missile unit are practicing combat training tasks,” Russia’s defence ministry said in a statement.
Reuters further reported that a video released by the Russian defence ministry showed a mobile missile system being escorted to a field as well as a rocket being loaded into a warship.
Putin indicated last week that Russia had no plans to use nuclear weapons to secure victory in Ukraine, but he added that he did not rule out changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine.
Russian video appears to show Finnish fighter jet
Separately, a video published by Russia’s Defence Ministry on Tuesday appears to show a Finnish Hornet fighter jet that was scrambled to the area to identify Russian planes over the Gulf of Finland.
Finland suspects a Russian military plane of violating Finnish airspace on Monday off the southeast coast.
According to Yle’s information, the aircraft was in Finnish airspace for about two minutes, and at one point had reached 2.5 kilometres in Finnish territory.
The video published by Russia’s defence ministry was also carried by the state-run news agency Tass, and shows two strategic bomber planes being escorted by Russian fighter jets. At one point in the video, a Hornet fighter also appears.
“The environment looks like the southern coast of Finland, and no other countries have Hornet fighters here, so I dare say that it is a Finnish Hornet,” military expert Marko Eklund told
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