Russia tests new rocket to beat missile defences

Russia successfully test-fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile yesterday featuring multiple warheads that Moscow said could pierce any missile defence system, including the planned US shield in Europe.

At the same time, President Vladimir Putin stepped up his attacks on the missile shield, saying its deployment in Europe would turn the continent into "a powder keg".

Russian military experts said the new missile was part of the "highly effective response" to the shield promised by Mr Putin earlier this year. Moscow fiercely opposes the missile shield as a threat to its security.

Asked about the launch, First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Russia's "new tactical and strategic complexes are able to overcome any existing or future missile defence system," Itar-Tass news agency reported.

"So from the point of view of defence and security, Russians can feel safe," Mr Ivanov said.

A defence ministry spokesman said the RS-24 missile was fired at 1020 GMT from a mobile launcher at the Plesetsk cosmodrome, about 800 km north of Moscow.

Less than an hour later, Russia'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 command said in a statement.

Russia says the US missile defence shield is a threat to its security and will change the strategic balance in Europe, but Washington dismisses such fears, saying the shield is intended to counter "rogue states".

Mr Putin issued his latest broadside against the shield after meeting visiting Portuguese Prime Minister José Socrates at the Kremlin yesterday.

"We consider it harmful and dangerous to turn Europe into a powder keg and to stuff it with new weapons," Mr Putin told Mr Socrates, whose country assumes the EU's rotating presidency on July 1.

"It creates new and unnecessary risks for the whole system of international and European relations".

Mr Ivanov, speaking separately, said the deployment of medium and short-range missiles by Russia's neighbours to the east and south now posed a "real threat".