Belarus reveals hypersonic systems wishlist
Belarus wants to host at least 10 new Russian Oreshnik medium-range hypersonic missile systems and is ready to accommodate even more, the country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, has said.
Lukashenko made the remarks on Thursday on the sidelines of the informal summit of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) leaders underway at the Igora resort complex near St. Petersburg. During the event, Lukashenko and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin held closed-doors talks that lasted for an hour and a half.
”I think it will be ten for now, and then we’ll see. If Russians want to deploy more, we will host more,” Lukashenko told reporters when asked how many of the state-of-art systems he would like to host.
Moscow and Minsk signed a new security deal early this month, agreeing, among other things, on the potential deployment of Oreshnik missile systems to Belarus. At the time, the Russian president said the missiles could be sent to the country in the second half of 2025.
The systems set to be stationed in Belarus will feature Russian-supplied missiles and locally-made launchers, Lukashenko has previously said.
Russia’s newest weapon is an intermediate-range ballistic missile which can carry multiple warheads capable of striking at hypersonic speeds. According to Moscow, the warheads are capable of travelling at ten times the speed of sound and cannot be intercepted by any existing air defense system.
Oreshnik was battle-tested in Ukraine last month with a strike on the sprawling military plant Yuzhmash in Dnepr.
