During an informal meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that full-scale production of Russia’s latest hypersonic missile system, known as "Oreshnik," has officially begun.

Putin stated that the first serially produced Oreshnik unit has already been completed and delivered to active-duty forces. According to reporters present at the meeting, he confirmed that the production line is now operational.

Commenting on Lukashenko’s earlier proposal to deploy Oreshnik systems on Belarusian territory, Putin said that everything is proceeding «according to plan» and added that the matter is expected to be fully resolved by the end of this year.

Oreshnik is a newly developed Russian medium-range ballistic missile system with a strike range of up to 5,500 kilometers. Its warhead includes six hypersonic glide vehicles, each capable of carrying a nuclear payload. The system’s reported average time from launch to target impact within EU territory ranges from 10 to 15 minutes, depending on distance. Currently, no existing air or missile defense systems are capable of intercepting these hypersonic blocks.

Oreshnik was first used in a combat scenario in late November of last year in Ukraine. The test missile, equipped with inert payloads rather than warheads, struck industrial facilities in the Dnipropetrovsk region with high precision. Though it carried no explosives, the kinetic energy alone caused significant structural damage, punching clean through multiple buildings.

According to preliminary estimates, the cost of a single Oreshnik missile complex is approximately 20 billion rubles.