Hundreds of military vehicles including mobile intercontinental ballistic missile launchers have been taking part in simulated military drills across Russia.

Footage has shown up to 400 vehicles take part in the exercise by rolling through wooded areas of the Altay region.

Among them were autonomous missile launchers including the Topol, Topol-M and the Yars as well as drones and hundreds of troops.

Hundreds of military vehicles have been taking part in a number of simulated drills across Russia

Among them were autonomous missile launchers including the Topol, Topol-M and the Yars as well as drones and hundreds of troops

Footage has shown up to 400 vehicles take part in the exercise by rolling through wooded areas of the Altay region

According to RT, crews manning the missile launchers are always training and the focus of the current drill was counter-sabotage measures.

The launchers are protected by special units of troops who specialise in detecting enemy forces, who might be waiting, and to eliminate their threat.

The Russian defence ministry explained that the summit of the drills is going to be conducting simulated launches by crews of mobile missile launchers taking part in the exercise, the ministry said.

The drills come as NATO and Russia hold their first talks since the alliance agreed at a summit in Warsaw to beef up its presence in eastern Europe due to fears over the Kremlin's expansionism.

The meeting between ambassadors from the 28-nation alliance and Russia is the first since April and just the second since 2014, when the Ukraine crisis plunged relations into a deep freeze.

Russian troops carry out a training exercise around a ballistic missile launcher during the military drill

The launchers are protected by special units of troops who specialise in detecting enemy forces, who might be waiting, and to eliminate their threat

The alliance said it would brief Moscow on last week's decision to send four battalions totalling around 4,000 soldiers to Poland and the Baltic states, which have been nervous ever since Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Moscow said it would discuss the risks of the US missile shield that NATO declared operational at the summit in the Polish capital, as well as improving airspace safety over the Baltic.

Russia has been strongly critical of the NATO decision, accusing the alliance of aggression and warning that it will react to the deployment of forces in its former Soviet backyard.

But NATO said it was acting purely defensively.