The Russian defence ministry said Vladimir Putin will personally oversee the exercise on Saturday.
It will involve multiple practice launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles and cruise missiles.
The Kremlin said it planned the manoeuvres some time ago to check the readiness of Russia’s military command and personnel, as well as the reliability of its nuclear and conventional weapons.
The war games follow US President Joe Biden’s warning that Russia could invade Ukraine within days.
US President Joe Biden has warned about the threat from Russia
LEAH MILLIS
Western fears focus on an estimated 150,000 Russian troops – including about 60% of Russia’s overall ground forces – concentrated near Ukraine’s borders.
The Kremlin insists it has no plans to invade.
But Moscow has demanded that the US and its allies keep Ukraine and other ex-Soviet states out of NATO, not deploy weapons in Ukraine and pull back NATO forces from Eastern Europe.
Washington and its allies bluntly rejected the Russian demands, but Moscow threatened to take unspecified “military-technical measures” in retaliation.
Russia holds massive drills of its strategic nuclear forces on an annual basis, but the manoeuvres planned for Saturday pointedly involve the Black Sea Fleet.
The fleet is based on the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
It comes as the US has issued some of its starkest, most detailed warnings yet about how a Russian invasion of Ukraine might unfold.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned UN officials of a possible staged drone strike or “so-called terrorist bombing” inside Russia, or even an attack using chemical weapons, which would be used as a justification for invading Ukraine.
