Russia Claims Success With Strategic Missile Tests

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
September 11th, 2006, 01:10

Moscow: Russia has conducted several successful intercontinental missile tests from nuclear submarines, Defence Minister Sergey Ivanov told President Vladimir Putin on Sunday. "The navy's strategic and nuclear forces had planned to carry out some major exercises in the first half of September. They were successfully completed today," said Ivanov in a televised declaration to the president.

The minister said a nuclear-propelled submarine had fired an intercontinental missile from the North Pole to a target in the Arkhangelsk region in the far north-east of Russia.

This meant it had achieved the minimum distance of 2,600 kilometres (1,600 miles) required to qualify as a strategic or intercontinental missile, he added.

A second missile was fired at the same target from a submarine stationed in the Pacific, he said.

On Thursday the defence ministry announced that a test firing of a strategic missile from a nuclear submarine had failed.