Russia test-launches new missile capable of penetrating American defences

Russia has sparked fears of a new cold war-style arms race by test-launching a new intercontinental ballistic missile capable of breaking through Amercian defences.

First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said the weapon, called the RS-24, is capable of carrying multiple independent warheads and a tactical cruise missile with an increased range, boasting that the weapons can penetrate any missile defence system.

"As of today, Russia has new tactical and strategic complexes that are capable of overcoming any existing or future missile defence systems," Ivanov said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.

"So in terms of defence and security, Russians can look calmly to the country's future."

President Vladimir Putin and Ivanov, a former defence minister seen as a potential Kremlin favorite to succeed Putin next year, repeatedly have said Russia would continue to improve its nuclear arsenal.

Russian arms control expert Alexander Pikayev said the new weapons appeared to be part of Russia's promised response to the missile defence plans and, more broadly, an effort to "strengthen the strategic nuclear triad - land-based, sea-based and air-based delivery systems for nuclear weapons - which suffered significant downsizing" amid financial troubles following the 1991 Soviet collapse.

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The weapon was fired from a mobile launcher at the Plesetsk launch site in northwestern Russia.

Its test warhead landed on target some 3,400 miles away on the Far Eastern Kamchatka Peninsula, a statement from the Strategic Missile Forces said.

Russian news reports said the missile is seen as eventually replacing the aging RS-18s and RS-20s that are the backbone of the country's missile forces.

The RIA-Novosti news agency cited an unnamed representative of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces as saying that the Rs-24 conforms with terms laid down in the START-I treaty and the 2002 U.S.-Russia treaty that calls for reducing each country's nuclear arsenal to 1,700-2,000 warheads.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had earlier warned that the deployment of a U.S. missile shield in Europe would turn the continent into 'a powder keg'.

"We consider it harmful and dangerous to turn Europe into a powder keg and to stuff it with new weapons," Putin told visiting Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates at the Kremlin.

"It creates new and unnecessary risks for the whole system of international and European relations," he told Socrates, whose country takes over the European Union's rotating presidency on July 1.