Bill Gertz, Washington Free Beacon

Russia’s armed forces conducted a “massive” nuclear forces exercise on Thursday simulating NATO and U.S. nuclear attacks and involving several long-range ballistic and cruise missile firings.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin confers with chief of staff of Russia’s Armed Forces, Col. Gen. Valery Gerasimov on May 7. Alexei Nikolsky / AFP / Getty

The large-scale nuclear war drills come amid heightened tensions between Russia and the West over Moscow’s military annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and Russian-instigated unrest in eastern Ukraine. …

Former Pentagon official Mark Schneider said the exercises are unusual and appear aimed the West. “This type of exercise is normally held in the fall not the spring. Holding it now suggests to me that the intent was nuclear intimidation against NATO over the Ukraine,” he said. …

For Thursday’s drills, an SS-25 road-mobile intercontinental missile, and two multiple-warhead SS-N-23 submarine-launched ballistic missiles were flight-tested. State-controlled Russian news outlets described the drills as a “massive launch-on-warning missile strike and countering a nuclear attack by the means of the Moscow missile defense system.”

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