Russia has successfully test-fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile that has multiple warheads designed to overcome missile defence systems.
The RS-24 missile was fired from a mobile launcher from the Plesetsk cosmodrome about 800km north of Moscow.
Russia's Strategic Missile Forces command said the missile had hit its targets at the test site on the sparsely inhabited far eastern peninsula of Kamchatka to the north of Japan.
Russian military experts said the new missile launch formed part of a ‘highly effective response’ promised by President Putin to a missile defence shield the US wants to build in Europe.
Those plans have alarmed Moscow and strained relations with the United States. Russia says the US missile defence shield is a threat to its security but Washington dismisses such fears, saying the shield is intended to counter ‘rogue states’.
