Belarus intends to finish making launch vehicles for Oreshnik missile systems by the end of the year. Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko made the relevant statement in his speech in the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation on 14 March during an official visit to the Russian Federation, BelTA has learned.
Aleksandr Lukashenko stressed: “The president of Russia and I have agreed to jointly protect our common Fatherland. Our arsenal includes the Belarus-Russia regional military force and the joint regional air defense system. Tactical nuclear weapons have been transferred to us. The Belarusian army will soon get cutting-edge hypersonic missile systems Oreshnik.”
According to the head of state, some components for Oreshnik missile systems are manufactured in Belarus. For instance, those are launch vehicles.
“We will make the launch vehicles by the end of the year. I am not going to disclose how many,” the president shared the details. “We discussed the matter [during negotiations with the Russian president] yesterday. Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] said: ‘We now have to decide where we will station them.’ I said: ‘It is simple. If we have something to station, we will station it.’”
When talking to reporters the day before, Aleksandr Lukashenko explained that Belarus does not have these modern Russian missile systems yet. The head of state said: “There are no Oreshniks yet. We are working on it. But when I looked into this problem (Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] got me to look into it), it turned out that all of it needs to be manufactured except for the missile. And we manufacture it in Belarus. This is why we are working on it. We have virtually finished making several launch vehicles, which are designated for Oreshnik systems. We will need missiles from the elder brother [Russia].”
