Russia launched a Proton-M carrier rocket with Breeze-M as its upper stage on Monday, sending the Loch-5X relay satellite into space.

The Russian state space company, Roscosmos, said in a statement that the Proton-M rocket was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome at 02:13 a.m. Moscow time (2313 GMT Sunday).

The upper stage has separated from the third stage of the "Proton-M" rocket and is currently placing the satellite in the specified orbit.

The multi-functional Russian satellite relay system Loach was put into trial operation in February 2016.