MOSCOW - Russia successfully test-fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile on Tuesday featuring multiple warheads designed to overcome missile defence systems, the Defence Ministry said.A ministry spokesman said the RS-24 missile was fired from a mobile launcher at 1020 GMT from the Plesetsk cosmodrome about 800 km (500 miles) north of Moscow. Less than an hour later, RussiaÂ’s Strategic Missile Forces command said the missile had hit its targets at the Kura test site on the sparsely inhabited far eastern peninsula of Kamchatka to the north of Japan.
‘The RS-24 intercontinental ballistic missile will strengthen the military potential of Russia’s strategic rocket forces to overcome anti-missile defence systems and thereby strengthen the potential nuclear deterrent of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces,’ the Strategic Missile Forces command said in a statement.
Russian military experts said the new missile launch formed part of a ‘highly effective response’ promised by President Vladimir Putin to a missile defence shield which Washington aims to build in Europe to detect and shoot down hostile missiles. ‘It can overcome any potential entire missile defence systems developed by foreign countries,’ Colonel-General Viktor Yesin told the official Russian Today television channel.