"The strategic nuclear missile submarine Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky... successfully fired a ballistic missile as part of military exercises at a testing range in northern Russia," the spokesman Igor Dygalo told AFP.

The Interfax-AVN news agency reported that the missile was of the new long-range Sineva, or RSM-54 type, acquired for use by the navy last month.

Dygalo declined to confirm this.

The Delta-class submarine used in the test dates from the Soviet era and was designed to attack cities and military installations.

The test firing comes as tensions have increased between Russia and the United States over missile defence.

President Vladimir Putin has angrily hit out at the United States' plans to place missile defence facilities in the Czech Republic and Poland, countries that were once ruled from Moscow, and has said that this could lead to a new Cold War.

The Sineva missile had already been test fired from a submarine at the North Pole last year.

It has a maximum range of 8,300 kilometres (5,200 miles) and can be launched with up to 10 independently targetable warheads from a maximum depth below sea level of 55 metres (180 feet), according to the Russian military technology site www.arms-expo.ru.

It is equipped to overcome missile defence technology and its course can be corrected with the aid of satellites.

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