Ahead of the New START treaty’s expiration, Russia launches new ballistic missile transport vessel

A Russian orthodox priest blessed the new Akademik Makeyev with holy water during the launching ceremony in Severodvinsk earlier in August. It might seems bizarre, the blessing of a vessel that will carry nuclear weapons powerful enough to take out several multimillion cities, but in today's wartime Russia the orthodox church works arm in arm with the Kremlin's propaganda.

Seeing photos of Russian clergymen blessing weapons of mass destruction have since the war against Ukraine started 11 years ago become as normal as reading hostile nuclear war comments by former president Dmitri Medvedev in social media. 

The nuclear armament ship Akademik Makeyev will be based in Okolnaya Bay near Severomorsk on the Kola Peninsula. Here, the Northern Fleet has its main reloading facility for nuclear ballistic missiles for Russia's fleet of Delta-IV and Borei-class submarines. 

Together with Gadzhiyevo naval base, this is also the location where nuclear warheads are attached to the missiles before being loaded into the tubes on the submarines. 

The new vessel has a reinforced hull capable of sailing in through ice, Zvezdochka reported in Telegram. While on patrol, ballistic missile submarines can hide under the Arctic ice. With Akademik Makeyev, a submarine in the Arctic can load or unload missiles without sailing back to port. 

The Akademik Makeyev is the Navy's second vessel capable of delivering nuclear missiles to submarines. The first, Akademik Kovalev, was delivered in 2016 to the Pacific Fleet, but has in recent years been attached to the Northern Fleet while awaiting the long delayed Akademik Makeyev. 

The Akademik Kovalev was last week seen on a video posted by the Northern Fleet while it was at port in Okolnaya Bay. 

The clock is ticking...

How many nuclear warheads - and nuclear missiles - Russia can deploy is limited by the New START Treaty, an arms reduction agreement with the United States signed in 2010 and extended by six years in 2019. 

The treaty limits the number of warheads to 1,550 on each side. Additional warheads are allowed on storage. 

Although Putin in 2023 announced that Russia "suspends its participation" in New START, it is commonly believed that Moscow for now does not exceeds the central limits of the treaty. 

A key challenge is that the New START expires in early February 2026. Russian could then easily add hundreds of new nuclear warheads to ballistic missiles on submarines. 

Another option is to make ready more missiles like the Bulava (for the Borei-A class) and Sineva (for the Delta-IV class), armed with warheads, to the two ships Akademik Makeyev for the Northern Fleet and the Akademik Kovalev. The latter is believed to sail over to the Pacific Fleet when new soon will arrive to the Kola Peninsula from Severodvinsk. 

With such move, adding deployed nukes to submarines at sea can happen quickly and more strategic submarines could sail deterrence patrols if Moscow should chose to escalate tensions.

Putin met with nuclear researchers 

On Friday, Vladimir Putin met with young employees of Rosatom in the nuclear corporation's research headquarters in Sarov, a closed town in the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast where key development of reactor- and plutonium weapons takes place. 

Putin said it is “no secret” that Russia’s defense capability is “largely connected with the research and use of northern latitudes.” … “Our strategic submarines sail under the ice of the Arctic Ocean and disappear from radars,” he said according to the transcript from the meeting posted by the Kremlin.

“This is our military advantage. And research, including in this [Arctic] zone, is extremely important for us,” Putin said.