Scott Ritter, a former U.S. START inspector at the Votkinsk plant, wrote in an opinion piece that after the breakup of the Soviet Union Votkinsk was working on a new missile - "the next generation missile, a joint Russian-Ukrainian design, was scrapped after a few prototypes were produced, but never launched." This must have been the early version of Topol-M, which was initially developed jointly by Yuzhmash and MITT and later transferred to MITT. Yuzhmash was apparently responsible for the silo-based version of the missile.