Oreshnik missile gives Putin, Lukashenka new form of nuclear extortion

By Galina Korol | 2024-12-18

KYIV -- Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarus's Alyaksandr Lukashenka this month began discussing the possibility of using Belarus as a deployment location for Russia's Oreshnik missile system.

"Please don't think I'm being brazen, but I would like to publicly request that you deploy new weapon systems, especially the Oreshnik, in Belarus," Lukashenka told Putin December 6 in Minsk at the end of a meeting of the Supreme State Council of the Union State, Russia's Interfax news agency reported.

That day, the two dictators marked the 25th anniversary of the treaty establishing the Union State of Russia and Belarus.

"As for the possibility of deploying, to put it bluntly, such formidable weapons as Oreshnik in Belarus ... it will become possible, I think, in the second half of next year," Putin told Lukashenka during their meeting in Minsk.

It will happen as "serial production" of the missile is "ramped up," he said.

Russia had already deployed tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus in 2023.

Soon after this conversation, at a meeting of Russia's Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, Putin again broached the Oreshnik, and specifically how its advent could affect the issue of nuclear weapon use.

"Generally speaking, we need to improve Oreshnik rather than the nuclear doctrine," Putin said on December 10. "When you think about it, the advancement of modern weapon systems has almost eliminated the need for the use of nuclear weapons."

'Perks' for a dictator

The comments by Putin and Lukashenka are raising questions about whether the Oreshnik truly could be an alternative to nuclear weapons.

"It seems like Putin was given these tools and told that they can work as a scare tactic like nuclear weapons, but they're not nuclear," Oleksii Izhak, an analyst at the National Institute for Strategic Studies in Kyiv, told Global Watch.

"And this makes [Putin] very happy, and he repeats it. He's basically acknowledging that he was never prepared to use a nuclear weapon, and he's not prepared now either, but now he has a toy," Izhak said. "And he keeps insisting that [the Oreshnik missile] could produce the same effect as a nuclear weapon."

Putin has now embarked on a new game of nuclear saber rattling, say observers.

But questions remain: How many weapons like this might Moscow actually have? Can it distribute them to their allies?

"I think this is a sort of dictator-to-dictator loyalty program," said Ivan Stupak, an analyst at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future and a former officer in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).

"[Putin] essentially has one loyal, serious ally left who is 99% compliant and whom Putin really wants to keep," he told Global Watch. "So he's steering these kinds of perks and bonuses to [Lukashenka]."

'Nuclear extortion'

The statements about deploying the new missiles in Belarus could be called "a form of nuclear extortion," expatriate Russian opposition politician Gennady Gudkov said.

"It's clear that from a military perspective, transferring missiles between 300km and 400km [from Russia to Belarus] makes no sense. The weapon's range is 5,000km," Gudkov said December 12, according to Ukrainian television Channel 24.

"But this is a political step."

"As for the question of deploying the Oreshnik in Belarus, I have a hard time imagining that Belarus and Lukashenka will get them for themselves. Everything will probably be under Russian control if this happens at all," David Sharp, an Israeli war correspondent, told Voice of America (VOA)'s Russian service for a December 9 article.

"You need to understand that unlike Iskanders, the Oreshnik is very expensive and has specific features, and on top of that, there are unanswered questions about production quantity and quality," Sharp said.

"It would be wrong to trust the propaganda without actual proof."

Putin and Lukashenka are carrying out a propaganda war, said Saulius Guzevičius, a former commander of Lithuanian special forces and a retired colonel.

"They say they're going to deploy the Oreshnik in Belarus in the second half of 2025, but for now, this is the continuation of threats to use a nuclear weapon, which [they] have been talking about for the past two years," Guzevičius told the VOA's Russian service in the same article.

"It's speculated that the Oreshnik can travel up to 5,500km at 10 times the speed of sound, and that makes it harder to shoot it down," he said. "But for now this is part of the propaganda war and a demonstration of the long-term warming of ties between Russia and Belarus because they signed a new agreement and now Belarus is under Russia's 'nuclear umbrella.'"