Moscow: Amid increasing tension between Russia and the West over arms control, Russia’s most advanced new nuclear-powered submarine test- launched a Bulava intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time hitting a target thousands of kilometres away.

Announcing this, the Defence Ministry here on October 30 said it was carried out while the Borei-class vessel was submerged in the White Sea off Russia’s north with a dummy payload reaching a test site in the Far East Russian region of Kamchatka.

The Knyaz Vladimir submarine is the first upgraded 955A model to be produced in the Borei class of Russian nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines.

It will enter service with Russia’s Northern Fleet at the end of this year once it has completed trials including weapons tests, the fleet’s commander, Vice Admiral Alexander Moiseev said.

The global arms control architecture erected during the Cold War to keep Washington and Moscow in check has come under strain since the demise of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

The last major nuclear arms control treaty between Russia and the United States, the New START treaty, is due to expire in 2021. It limits the number of strategic nuclear warheads the world’s two biggest nuclear powers can deploy.