Moscow. July 9. INTERFAX-AVN-Two Tu-160 strategic aircraft flew from the Anadyr airfield to a base in the Saratov Region during the exercises, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.
"The flight route passed over the waters of the Arctic Ocean, the East Siberian and Kara Seas, within the borders of the Russian Federation," the Russian Defense Ministry said.
They noted that the planes covered more than 8 thousand km.
Anadyr is the easternmost city in Russia, near the maritime border of Russia and the United States.
According to the military department, during the flight from Chukotka, the Tu-160 crews performed a passing refueling in the air.
As Interfax reported, Tu-160 aircraft flew to Anadyr in Chukotka in 2020, 2019 and 2018.
On July 6, the Russian Defense Ministry announced the start of long-range aviation exercises. The maneuvers involved strategic missile carriers-Tu-160 and Tu-95MS bombers. According to the training alert, long-range aviation units were raised in the Saratov, Amur, Irkutsk and Ryazan regions, the military reported.
"During the combat training activities, long-range aviation crews will have to work out the relocation of aircraft equipment to operational airfields, flights with refueling in the air, the combat use of aviation weapons against ground targets at landfills," the Russian Defense Ministry said.
In March of this year, the Russian military reported on exercises in which three nuclear submarines surfaced with a break in the ice in the Arctic, and two MiG-31 long-range interceptor fighters flew to the North Pole in the forward and reverse direction.
In March 2018, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that"for the first time since Soviet times, anti-submarine aviation flights were carried out across the North Pole to the North American continent." At that time, sources told Interfax that two Russian anti-submarine aircraft accompanied by fighter jets and a tanker aircraft made the flight across the North Pole.
In November 2017, the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation, Valery Gerasimov, said that Russia had increased the intensity of strategic aviation flights to the level that was under the USSR.
On December 21, 2019, in an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio, the commander of the long-range aviation Kobylash said that Russia is developing military infrastructure in the Arctic, including at airfields where strategic and long-range bombers fly. He called patrolling by long-range aircraft of the Arctic a priority task.
