Lukashenko Claims Russia’s Oreshnik Missile Destroyed Yuzhmash in One Minute
Belarusian President Lukashenko says Russia’s Oreshnik missile wiped out the Yuzhmash plant in a minute, as Moscow tests its new hypersonic system in combat.
Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko has claimed that in 2024 the Russian missile system Oreshnik destroyed the Ukrainian plant Yuzhmash in the space of a single minute.
He drew attention to the fact that around the world there are many examples of key industrial infrastructure being wiped out in armed conflicts, and said the strike on Yuzhmash was one of them. Lukashenko described the plant as a huge enterprise dating back to Soviet times, noting that part of its workshops extended 5–7 levels underground because, in that era, preparations were being made for a possible nuclear war.
He stated that a single strike by the Oreshnik system on Yuzhmash was enough for this massive, globally unique facility to cease to exist in about a minute, adding that he would not even begin to estimate how many people were killed.
Earlier, on 21 November 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that, in response to the use by Ukrainian forces of US and British long-range weapons, Russian troops had carried out a combined strike on one of the facilities of Ukraine’s defense industry. According to him, a complex in Dnepropetrovsk that produced, among other things, missile equipment was hit. As part of that operation, one of Russia’s newest medium-range missile systems, Oreshnik, in a non-nuclear hypersonic configuration, was tested in combat conditions.