Russia and Belarus will practice using nuclear weapons and the Oreshnik missile

Moscow, August 13.- The joint Russian-Belarusian Zapad 2025 exercises will include planning for the use of nuclear weapons and the Oreshnik missile, Belta reports, citing the Belarusian Ministry of Defense.

"This is an important element of strategic deterrence for us. As the head of state [Alexander Lukashenko] demands, we must be prepared for anything. We see the situation on our western and northern borders and cannot calmly watch militarization and military activity", said the head of the agency, Viktor Khrenin.

According to him, Belarus demonstrates its openness and spirit of peace, but must always "keep its powder dry".

The Zapad 2025 maneuvers will be held in Belarus between September 12 and 16. According to the drill tasks announced by Minsk, the common goal is to test both countries' capabilities to ensure military security and "readiness to repel possible aggression."

Oreshnik is a novel Russian intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of hitting targets at a hypersonic speed of Mach 10, equivalent to nearly three kilometers per second.

The power of a massive Oreshnik attack can be equivalent to that of a nuclear attack: everything at the epicenter of the explosion splits into fragments and turns to dust. According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, "there is no chance of shooting down these missiles", whose range reaches up to 5,500 km.

The first combat use of this innovative weapon took place on November 21, 2024, when "a fireball crossed the sky" and destroyed the Ukrainian Yuzhmash plant with a "precise, deep, and seemingly silent explosion". This plant, one of the largest industrial complexes known since the Soviet era, now produced missile technology and other weapons for the Kyiv regime in the city of Dnepropetrovsk.

As agreed last year between Moscow and Minsk, Russian ballistic missile complexes will arrive in Belarus by the end of 2025, and their deployment sites have already been determined.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia had launched serial production of the Oreshnik. (Text and photo: RT)