Russia's defense ministry said it would hold military drills including practice for the preparation and deployment for use of non-strategic nuclear weapons. "During the exercise, a set of measures will be carried out to practice the issues of preparation and use of non-strategic nuclear weapons," the ministry said. Russia and the United States are by far the world's biggest nuclear powers, holding more than 10,600 of the world's 12,100 nuclear warheads. No power has used nuclear weapons in war since the United States unleashed the first atomic bomb attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Major nuclear powers routinely check their nuclear weapons but very rarely publicly link such exercises to specific perceived threats in the way that Russia has.

---

Persons: Vladimir Putin, Alexey Danichev, Natalia Kolesnikova, Joe Biden, Andriy Yusov, Sergei Shoigu, Emmanuel Macron, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ludovic Marin, David Cameron, Dmitry Peskov, Putin, Abrams, Sean Gallup Organizations: Federal Assembly's Council, Reuters, Missile, Southern Military District, Military, Victory Day, Afp, Getty, Russian Federation, Federation of American Scientists, CNN, Ukraine, Kremlin, U.S . Senate, AFP, British, NATO, U.S . Army, British Amphibious Engineer Battalion Locations: Saint Petersburg, Russia, Reuters Russia, Moscow, France, Britain, United States, Ukraine, U.S, China, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Russian, Paris, London, Soviet Union, Gniew, Poland