A report in Jane's 360 last week suggested that the new rail-mobile ICBM, Barguzin, is "set to be axed" (unfortunately, the full version of the article is behind a paywall). That would probably be the right thing to do - it is hard to see how a program that will end up producing a handful of missiles could justify the cost (the same is true for other programs as well, Sarmat, for example). Well, maybe it was okay during the fat years, but Russia seems to have entered the lean years territory.

As it turned out, a couple of month ago there was indeed a report about Barguzin readiness date moving to 2020 from the original 2018. But the program does not seem to be dead quite yet - following Jane's story a source in the industry told Interfax that the pop-up tests of the missile are scheduled to begin later this year. However, from what the source said it does seem that the program's future is in doubt.