Uzbek Defence Minister Ruslan Mirzayev met with his Russian counterpart Anatoly Serdyukov on Monday to discuss the use of Uzbekistan’s territory as a place for dumping spent stages of Russia’s RS-20 carrier rockets, the Russian minister’s spokesman Alexei Kuznetsov said after the talks.

The ministers discussed "the question of using the desolate Ustyurt Plateau in the north of Uzbekistan as a place for dumping the separable parts of the RS-20 carrier rockets when putting the Theos satellite into near-Earth orbit".

"The launch of the RS-20 is scheduled for December of this year," Kuznetsov said.