Russia achieves nuclear parity with US for the first time since Soviet era

Russia caught up with the United States on the number of nuclear weapons. For the first time since the beginning of the century, Russia caught up with the United States on the number of all carriers of nuclear weapons, Zvezda TV and radio company said. The information was originally revealed by the US State Department.

Moscow provided the information on the number of nuclear weapons to Washington with the scope of the Russian-American treaty on strategic offensive arms.

Parity has thus been achieved by putting into service nuclear submarines of Project 955, equipped with Bulava missiles with multiple warheads. At the end of 2014, the second submarine of this type of, Alexander Nevsky was put into service at the Russian Navy. The sub is armed with 16 missiles, each of them is equipped with six warheads. In addition, intercontinental ballistic missiles Topol-M a single warhead were replaced with Yars missiles that had three warheads.

The Russian-American treaty on strategic offensive arms was signed in 2011. In accordance with the document, the United States and Russia should reduce the total number of nuclear warheads to 1,550, of which no more than 800 can be used on combat duty. The amount of deployed strategic carriers, intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and heavy strategic bombers should be reduced to 700 units.

In September, Russia successfully tested ballistic missile Bulava that precisely hit the conditional target.