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Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Friday that Moscow began to produce his last Orechnik hypersonic missiles and reaffirmed his intention to deploy them in Bélarus during the year, which would constitute a direct threat to neighboring Ukraine.
Sitting alongside the president of Bélarus, Alexandre Loukachenko, on the island of Valaam, near Saint-Petersburg, Vladimir Putin said that the Russian army had already selected the deployment sites of the Orechnik missile on Bélarusian territory.
“The preparatory work is underway, and it is very likely that we will have finished it before the end of the year”said the Russian manager, adding that the first series of Orechniks and their systems were produced and came into military service.
Is the Orechnik missile as powerful as the Kremlin claims?
Russia has Used for the first time the Orechnik – which means “hazelnut” in Russian – against Ukraine in November, when she pulled this experimental weapon on a Dnipro factory which manufactured missiles at the time when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union.
This strike caused explosions that lasted up to three hours, according to the authorities, but did not make any victims.
The Russian state media praised the Orechnik after the attack on Dnipro and, in a warning to the West, said that it would only need 11 minutes to reach an air base in Poland and 17 minutes to reach the NATO seat in Brussels.
Vladimir Putin also praised the skills of the missile, saying that its multiple warheads, which plunge towards a target at a speed that can reach Mach 10, cannot be intercepted and are so powerful that the use of several of them could be as devastating as a nuclear attack.
However, experts have stressed that the actual missile capacities have not yet been proven and that they could be exaggerated for propaganda purposes.
In June, reports said that an Orechnik missile had dismantled Kazakhstan, which led the Astana authorities to open an investigation.
Threat to the West
The Russian president warned the West that Moscow could attack the Ukrainian NATO allies if they allowed Kyiv to use their longer -range missiles to knock inside Russia.
The chief of the Russian missile forces said that Orechnik, which can transport conventional or nuclear warheads, has a scope allowing it to reach any target in Europe.
Intermediate -range missiles can fly between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. These weapons were prohibited under a treaty dating from the Soviet era that Washington and Moscow abandoned in 2019.
Last fall, Vladimir Putin and Alexandre Loukachenko signed a treaty giving, according to Moscow, “Security guarantees” In Bélarus, including the possible use of Russian nuclear weapons.
This pact follows the Revision by the Kremlin of its nuclear doctrinewho placed the Bélarus for the first time under his nuclear umbrella, in a context of tensions with the West about the war waged by Russia in Ukraine.
Extension of the Russian missiles radius of action
Alexandre Loukachenko, who Direct the Bélarus for over 30 years And depends on the subsidies and support of the Kremlin, allowed Russia to use the territory of its country to send troops to Ukraine when the invasion was launched in early 2022 and to welcome some of its tactical nuclear weapons.
Russia has not revealed how many weapons of this type have been deployed, but President Bélarusse said in December that his country currently owned several dozen.
The deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Bélarus, which has a 1,084 km border with Ukraine, would allow Russian planes and missiles to reach targets more easily and more quickly in this country if Moscow decided to use them.
This also extends Russia’s ability to target several NATO allies in central and eastern Europe.
The revised nuclear doctrine that Vladimir Putin signed last year formally lowered the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons by Russia.
The document indicates that Moscow could use nuclear weapons “In response to the use of nuclear weapons and other types of weapons of mass destruction” against Russia or its allies, as well as in the event of aggression ‘against Russia and Bélarus with conventional weapons threatening “their sovereignty and/or their territorial integrity'”.
Additional sources • AP
