With President Vladimir Putin looking on, Russia's largest military exercise in over two decades took to the high frontier Wednesday with the launch of a clandestine payload from the nation's northern space base near the Arctic Circle.

The Molniya booster took flight at approximately 0705 GMT (2:05 a.m. EST) from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in far northern Russia. It marked the first launch from that site this year and Russia's first orbital military mission of 2004.

As part of the Soyuz rocket family, the Molniya flight was the second of 10 Soyuz missions expected this year.

Putin arrived at Plesetsk and was to have toured the Molniya launch pad prior to liftoff, various news reports said. After observing the blastoff, Putin was to have observed another launch via television -- this time of a ballistic missile with a dummy warhead from the faraway Baikonur Cosmodrome.

The payload was identified by the RIA Novosti news organization as a Kosmos military communications satellite likely bound for an elliptical orbit with a high inclination.

The four-stage Molniya rocket has the capability to place payloads of up to about 4,500 pounds into such orbits, reports indicate.

Under the official Russian military satellite identification matrix, the newly launched craft will assume the name Kosmos 2405.

The mission was part of a high profile military training drill underway this week that includes thousands of soldiers, sailors, and other forces in a number of tests of equipment such as space vehicles, missiles, aircraft, and naval vessels.

The exercise has been deemed the largest and most extensive since the former Soviet Union startled the world with an immense series of tests in 1982.