MOSCOW, December 24 (RIA Novosti) – Russia carried out a successful test-firing of an RS-24 Yars ballistic missile from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northwest Russia on Tuesday, a military representative said.
“Today, December 24 at 11:00 a.m. Moscow time a detachment of the Strategic Missile Forces conducted a test launch of a Yars silo-based solid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missile equipped with a test warhead,” Colonel Igor Yegorov said.
The fifth-generation RS-24 (NATO reporting name SS-29) is an upgraded version of the Topol-M ballistic missile and can carry multiple independently-targetable nuclear warheads designed to evade missile defense systems. The first RS-24 launch took place at Plesetsk in 2007.
In October the Russian newspaper Vedemosti reported that another new ballistic missile, codenamed RS-26 Rubezh, would have its first test launch by the end of the year.
