Russia is preparing to deploy its new hypersonic Oreshnik missiles in Belarus in 2025, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko said Tuesday.
Lukashenko said he had asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for the new missiles on Friday, citing fears of escalation due to the presence of Polish and Lithuanian troops near Belarus’ western border. The Belarusian leader said his country is in the process of deciding where to deploy the Russian-provided Oreshniks, according to Belarusian media Tuesday.
“Russians will supply us with missiles for free,” Lukashenko said, adding that Belarus would choose what to target with the missiles.
Russia first used the Oreshnik missile to strike the Ukrainian city of Dnipro late last month in response to Kyiv’s use of advanced weapons provided by France, the U.S. and the U.K. to strike Russia. After the missile launch, Putin boasted that “as of today there are no means of counteracting such a weapon.”
At the time, Putin also threatened countries helping Ukraine defend itself against Russia, saying “we consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities.”
The new hypersonic ballistic missile reduces the need for nuclear weapons, Putin said on Tuesday, seemingly downplaying the threat of a nuclear conflagration amid an escalating war against Ukraine.
“By and large, what we need now is not to improve the nuclear doctrine, but the Oreshnik,” Putin said during a meeting of the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights, according to Russian state media. “A sufficient number of these modern systems simply puts the need for the use of nuclear weapons on the brink of virtually no need.”
Andrii Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, wrote in a Telegram post that “the deployment in Belarus will be spread purely for information purposes” to evoke fear in Europe following the decision of some countries to allow Ukraine to use their weapons to strike targets within Russia.
Veronika Melkozerova contributed to this report.
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