ICBM (Anti Missilie Shield) designed to overcome Missile shield By Russia

Russia test-fired an intercontinental missile designed to avoid detection by missile-defence systems, raising the temperature in a tense stand-off with the West over Georgia.

The Topol RS-12M intercontinental ballistic missile was launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia and flew 6,000 kilometres (3,700 miles) to hit a target on Kamchatka Peninsula in the far east, a military spokesman said.

The test was meant "to develop equipment for potential combat use against ground-based ballistic missiles," Alexander Vovk, a spokesman for Russia's strategic nuclear forces, said in televised remarks.

The test came barely a week after the United States completed an accord with Poland on basing anti-missile interceptors in the east European country and as Russia accuses NATO of building up its naval presence in the Black Sea.

But analysts said the launch was likely planned in advance and not directly linked to soaring tensions with the West over Russia's conflict with ex-Soviet Georgia.

The stand-off has deepened since President Dmitry Medvedev's announcement that Russia was recognising South Ossetia and another rebel region, Abkhazia, as independent states.

Russia has been upgrading its Topol missiles in response to US plans to develop a missile-defence shield using ground-based interceptors, analysts said.

Russia is saying once again that has the opportunity to overcome US missile defence.
Possibility are that the test was timed to coincide with tensions over Georgia.

The Topol was first tested in 1983 but Russia has in recent years been adapting it to include countermeasures against missile defence, with the last test-firing in December 2007.

These missiles will be stationed alongside Russia border.

Washington's plan to site elements of a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic has angered Moscow despite US assurances that the plan does not threaten Russia and is meant to protect against "rogue states" like Iran.