Alyaksandr Lukashenka, speaking at the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly, denied reports about the deployment of the Oreshnik system near Slutsk and said the complex was placed “where it is more advantageous.” The day before, he said that Oreshnik had been in Belarus since December 17 and had gone on combat duty.
“Today I read that our ‘hotheads’ over there abroad claimed that somewhere near Slutsk we deployed Oreshnik. I do not want to say where and I will not say it, but this is complete nonsense. We did not deploy Oreshnik in any Slutsk. We deployed it where it is more advantageous, but I will not talk about that. Although over time this will not remain a secret. Creating such a deployment area over a short or long period of time will not remain a secret. And I read this and smile at how foolish they are. Many people understand and know that this is not the case, but they just want to blurt something out in the media,” he said.
“There has been talk here about missile building — there is no getting away from it: defense capability must exist. We have already learned to do some things in missile building. We keep saying ‘Oreshnik,’ ‘Oreshnik.’ I myself somehow did not pay attention to it. Vladimir Putin once told me: ‘Do you even know that Oreshnik is largely Belarusian production?’ God bless you, I hear this for the first time. It turns out that only the missile — a complex technical structure — is Russian-made, while everything else is Belarusian,” Lukashenka said.
He stated the need to create domestic missile production. In his view, Belarus does not require strategic missiles.
“It has gone on combat duty. There is more than one vehicle there — I will not go into numbers here — the support vehicles and the launcher itself are Belarusian-made. But we need the missile. That missile exists with the Russians. Of course, we will not create Oreshnik ourselves — it is very expensive. We could do this together with the Russians — especially since I met with the designers who provide, among other things, the strategic shield of the Russian Federation. Our people, we speak the same language, we understand each other. One of them, back in Soviet times, worked on the nuclear potential — it was called the Pioneer project — and since then he has liked Belarus. He works with pleasure and helped a lot in creating this deployment area for Oreshnik,” he said.
