Defiant: Russian President Vladimir Putin. Credit:Reuters President Vladimir Putin has emphasised that Russia must maintain a strong nuclear deterrent, in part because of an anti-missile shield the US is building in Europe, which Moscow says could undermine its security. The US received proper Russian notification ahead of its ICBM test-fire, a US official said. The 20-metre long RS-12M, known in NATO parlance as the SS-25 Sickle, was first put in service in 1985, six years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, and is designed to carry a nuclear warhead. Its range is over 10,000 kilometres. The launch follows Russia's decision to send troops into the southern Ukraine region of Crimea, with Moscow claiming that the lives of ethnic Russians there were threatened by the political upheaval in Ukraine.

Russia has test-fired a Topol nuclear-capable missile. Credit:Reuters Mr Putin, in his first comments since the crisis in Ukraine boiled over, said on Tuesday that he saw no reason for Russia's army to intervene in eastern Ukraine at the moment, but left open the possibility of military action, saying that Russia "reserves the right to use all means at our disposal to protect" Russian speakers in the country's south and east if they are in danger. "We are not going to fight with the Ukrainian people," he said. "I want you to understand me clearly. If we make such a decision, it will only be for the protection of Ukrainian citizens. And god forbid if any of the servicemen tries to shoot their own people, we will be standing behind them - not in front, but behind. Let them try to shoot women and children!" Speaking defiantly at an hour-long, unscripted news conference in Moscow at which he described events in Ukraine as an "unconstitutional coup", Mr Putin denied that Russian troops had occupied Crimea and laid blame for the crisis on the US, which he said had interfered in Ukraine "from across the pond in America as if they were sitting in a laboratory and running experiments on rats, without any understanding of the consequences". Clearly furious, Mr Putin delivered a version of the crisis almost entirely at odds with the view held by most officials in Europe and the US, as well as by many Ukrainians. He described anti-government protests in Kiev as an "orgy" of radicals and nationalists, noting a swastika armband that he had glimpsed in images of the crowd. He also insisted that ousted president Viktor Yanukovych had never ordered security forces to shoot protesters, suggesting that snipers stationed on rooftops "may have been provocateurs from opposition parties".

Mr Putin said Mr Yanukovych's fatal mistake had been to order security forces to withdraw from the site of the protests after days of bloodshed, while the sides were engaged in negotiations, and that he had warned him not to do so. He said Russia had then stepped in to assist Mr Yanukovych, but did so for humanitarian reasons, "because death is the simplest way to get rid of the legitimate president, and it would have happened. I think he would have been probably killed." And he expressed confidence that the crisis would not boil over into war, because, as he put it, Ukrainian and Russian soldiers are "brothers in arms". Loading "I am convinced that Ukrainian personnel and Russian personnel will not be on different sides of the barricades, they will be on the same side of the barricades," he said. "There has not been a shot fired in Crimea. The tense situation in Crimea, related to the possibility of the use of force, has been exhausted. There was no necessity of that." Reuters, New York Times