Belarus to get Russia’s Oreshnik missile by year’s end

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko announced on Monday that the Russian-made “Oreshnik” medium-range missile system will be deployed on Belarusian territory by the end of 2025.

He made the remarks during a ceremonial address marking Belarus’ Independence Day, according to a report from the state news agency BelTA.

“In Volgograd, we agreed with our ‘older brother,’ Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, that the first Oreshnik positions will be in Belarus,” Lukashenko said. “You’ve already seen how the Oreshnik performs. By the end of the year, this weapon will be stationed in Belarus.”

The announcement follows a series of public endorsements of the missile system by Russian President Vladimir Putin. On June 23, Putin claimed the Oreshnik system had performed well under combat conditions in Ukraine.

“The serial production of the newest medium-range missile complex Oreshnik is being launched. It has proven itself very well in combat conditions,” Putin said.

The Kremlin leader first introduced the missile in a statement on November 21, 2024, asserting that it was used for the first time in response to Ukraine’s employment of long-range Western-supplied weapons. Putin claimed the system, in its non-nuclear configuration, struck a Ukrainian defense industry site.

“In response to the use of Western long-range weapons against Russia, our forces used the newest domestically-produced Oreshnik medium-range ballistic missiles in non-nuclear configuration,” Putin said at the time. “The target was a Ukrainian military-industrial facility — the Yuzhmash plant.”

The Kremlin has offered no visual evidence to support those claims. Ukrainian officials have not publicly confirmed whether Yuzhmash was hit by such a missile.

Later, Putin suggested that decision-making centers in Kyiv could become targets for the Oreshnik system, referencing a strike on the city of Dnipro. No independent verification has been provided linking that attack to the new missile.

The “Oreshnik” complex, also known as RS-26, whose exact specifications remain classified, is described by Russian officials as a medium-range ballistic system intended to operate below the 5,500-kilometer threshold defined by international arms control regimes. It is unclear whether the missile is compliant with any post-INF bilateral or multilateral agreements.

Western analysts have yet to confirm the system’s deployment on the battlefield or its production status.

If deployed in Belarus, the Oreshnik system would place NATO member states Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia within its reported operational range. The move follows a pattern of increased Russian military integration with Belarusian territory since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.