Putin says Belarus will receive Russia’s new Oreshnik missiles, while Lukashenko will ‘determine targets’
Russia could deploy its new Oreshnik medium-range hypersonic missile on the territory of its ally Belarus in 2025, Vladimir Putin has said.
The Russian president responded to a request from his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko during a summit in Minsk, where the two leaders signed a mutual defense pact today.
“As for the possibility of deploying such, frankly, formidable weapons as the Oreshnik on the territory of Belarus, since today we signed an agreement on security guarantees using all available forces and resources, I consider the deployment of systems like the Oreshnik on the territory of the Republic of Belarus is feasible,” Putin said.
“I think this will become possible in the second half of next year, as serial production of these systems increases in Russia and these missile systems enter service with the Russian strategic forces,” he added in televised comments.
Russia fired the Oreshnik at a Ukrainian city last month in what Putin described as a first test of the weapon in combat conditions.
He boasted that it is impossible to intercept and that it has enormous destructive power even if equipped with a conventional warhead.
Some Western experts are skeptical of Putin’s claims about the missile, which they say is based on a system that Russia once tested as an intercontinental weapon before shelving its development.
Chilling footage shows Vladimir Putin’s new Oreshnik hypersonic weapon attacking a defense factory in Dnipro, Ukraine, on November 21, 2024
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko take part in a signing ceremony after a meeting of the Supreme State Council of the Union State of Russia and Belarus in Minsk, Belarus, December 6, 2024
The moment when Russia first used the Oreshnik to attack Dnipro, on November 21
Putin told Lukashenko that Belarus – which shares borders with NATO members Poland, Latvia and Lithuania – would determine targets for Oreshniks based on its territory.
The two men met in the Belarusian capital on Friday to mark the 25th anniversary of the Union State, a borderless union and alliance between the former Soviet republics.
Putin said the mutual defense treaty “will make it possible to reliably protect the security of Russia and Belarus, thereby creating the conditions for further peaceful and sustainable development of the two states,” state news agency TASS reported.
The Kremlin leader last month approved changes that lowered the threshold for a nuclear attack on Russia and expanded Moscow’s nuclear umbrella to include Belarus.
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, nuclear weapons were withdrawn from Belarus, but Putin announced last year that Russia was placing tactical nuclear missiles there as a deterrent to the West.
Lukashenko, who has been in power in Belarus since 1994, said in October that any use of Russian nuclear weapons now deployed in Belarus would require his personal approval.