President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Russia has started production of its newest hypersonic missiles and reaffirmed its plans to deploy them to ally Belarus later this year.
Sitting alongside Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko on Valaam Island near St Petersburg, Mr Putin said the military already has selected deployment sites in Belarus for the Oreshnik intermediate range ballistic missile.
“Preparatory work is ongoing, and most likely we will be done with it before the year’s end,” Mr Putin said, adding that the first series of Oreshniks and their systems have been produced and entered military service.
Russia first used the Oreshnik, which is Russian for “hazelnut tree”, against Ukraine in November, when it fired the experimental weapon at a factory in Dnipro that built missiles when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union.
Mr Putin has praised the Oreshnik’s capabilities, saying its multiple warheads that plunge to a target at speeds up to Mach 10 are immune to being intercepted and are so powerful that the use of several of them in one conventional strike could be as devastating as a nuclear attack.
He warned the West that Moscow could use it against Ukraine’s Nato allies which allowed Kyiv to use their longer-range missiles to strike inside Russia.
Russia’s missile forces chief has declared that the Oreshnik, which can carry conventional or nuclear warheads, has a range allowing it to reach all of Europe.
Intermediate-range missiles can fly between 310 to 3,400 miles. Such weapons were banned under a Soviet-era treaty that Washington and Moscow abandoned in 2019.
Last fall, Mr Putin and Mr Lukashenko signed a treaty giving Moscow’s security guarantees to Belarus, including the possible use of Russian nuclear weapons to help repel any aggression.
The pact follows the Kremlin’s revision of its nuclear doctrine, which for the first time placed Belarus under the Russian nuclear umbrella amid tensions with the West over the conflict in Ukraine.
Mr Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus with an iron hand for over 30 years and has relied on Kremlin subsidies and support, allowed Russia to use his country’s territory to send troops into Ukraine in 2022 and to host some of its tactical nuclear weapons.
Russia hasn’t disclosed how many such weapons were deployed, but Mr Lukashenko said in December that his country currently has several dozen.
