President Vladimir Putin has expanded the powers of the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), giving it the authority to oversee the security of facilities that develop nuclear weapons, Kommersant newspaper reports.

The respective presidential decree has been posted on the portal of publicizing of legal acts of Russia.

The powers of the Russian MoD are set out in subsection 70.1 of the presidential decree.

Prior to today's decree, it had stated that the Russian MoD oversees facilities operated by Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation of Russia and its subsidiaries.

Rosatom, as noted in the aforesaid subsection, was the owner of nuclear facilities on behalf of the Russian state, and the Russian MoD monitors the safety of development, production, operation, and disposal of nuclear weapons.

But with the new edition, nothing is said about the property rights of Rosatom's facilities. Also, the aforesaid subsection states that the Russian MoD shall start monitoring military nuclear energy devices. They were not mentioned in the earlier document.

This presidential decree enters into force from the date of its publicizing: today.