ISTANBUL

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Thursday said that his country has deployed the Russian Oreshnik missile system and "is now on combat alert."

“The first positions have been equipped for the Oreshnik missile system. It was deployed yesterday and is now on combat alert,” Lukashenko announced in an address to the nation at the 7th All-Belarusian People's Assembly in Minsk, broadcast live by state news agency Belta.

The remarks come over a month after Lukashenko said the Russia-made missile system would be put on combat alert in December, expressing that its deployment was meant to signal that Minsk “can strike if the going gets tough.”

He previously said at a ceremony marking Belarus’ Independence Day in July that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed the system would be deployed by the end of the year.

The Oreshnik was first used in November 2024, when Moscow said it struck a plant in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro in response to Kyiv’s use of Western-supplied long-range weapons on Russian territory.

Minsk said in September that Russian and Belarusian forces practiced planning for the use of non-strategic nuclear weapons and the deployment of Oreshnik during the Zapad-2025 joint exercises held in the country.

In March 2023, Putin announced that Russia would deploy tactical nuclear weapons and complete the construction of a special storage facility in neighboring Belarus.

- Meeting with Trump

In his address, Lukashenko also said that Belarus has begun to build a "constructive" but "very difficult" dialogue with the US.

"Everything is moving, as they said, towards a big deal ... everything is moving towards the fact that we must meet with (US President Donald) Trump and come to an agreement," he said, noting that Washington, for its part, is guaranteeing the lifting of all sanctions.

"They understand why we or Russia bully over this dollar? You (the US) want to keep the dollar as a reserve currency, right? So why are you doing this? Trump understands this ... Therefore, the truth is on our side, and time will put everything in its place," he further expressed.

Lukashenko suggested that Trump may receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2026 and that Minsk and Washington are discussing the reopening of the US Embassy in Belarus but noted they have yet to agree on who will provide security for the mission.

"They (the US) say, 'Look, Marines, this is our policy: our guys are supposed to guard the embassy.' I say, 'Thank you, but no, we'll have (Interior Minister Ivan) Kubrakov provides security ... We don't need Marines.' They are thinking about it," he went on to say.

He also described the EU as one of four "poles of power" in the world after the US, Russia, and China. "But given their internal turmoil and hysterical demands, this pole could collapse!" he added.