Vladimir Putin is demanding urgent potato imports from Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, while he delays supplying the ally with promised notorious Oreshnik horror missiles. Putin has made the shameful admission that he has run out of spuds – one of his country’s leading food staples – amid economic meltdown during his war with Ukraine.
It now appears Belarus will not get the lethal missiles until after Lukashenko supplies Putin with new exports of potatoes which have spiralled in prices in Russia. The Minsk tyrant has even cancelled sanctions against imports from the EU to stock up to supply Russia
It was in January that Lukashenko, 70, boasted to journalists that he would have the lethal Oreshnik missiles from “my elder brother” Putin, 72, “any day now”. Oreshnik is nuclear-capable, but Putin insists it is almost as destructive with a non-nuclear warhead and “unstoppable” by the West.
Targets would be incinerated, he said, by missiles unleashing a temperature of 4,000C, almost as hot as the surface of the sun.
Putin is believed to have only used the “game-changing weapon” once – last year against Ukraine in Dnipro city, without a live warhead.
Lukashenko’s security chief Lt-Gen Alexander Volfovich revealed this week that the Oreshnik deployment has not happened and is only now expected to “by the year’s end”. This contrasts with Lukashenko insisting in January: “Any day now, we’ll have the Oreshnik systems.”
Volfovich denied speculation that the chronic delay indicates a problem with a missile that has not undergone usual tests by its makers.
“Preparations are proceeding as planned,” he claimed. “Let others think – perhaps abroad – that [Oreshnik] won’t be in Belarus. But we know exactly where it is, and how it functions.”
A deployment means the Oreshnik could hit Britain in less than nine minutes, Russia has boasted.
Having failed to meet the missile deliveries, Putin insisted he needed Lukashenko to send him potatoes.
The Belarus ruler – a Soviet-era potato farmer – told his officials: “There has been a lot of talk, especially after a meeting chaired by the Russian president [Vladimir Putin], who joked about potatoes. The issue is very serious to us. How?
We know how to grow potatoes above all things. We should grow enough for ourselves and for Russia…. We need to help our brothers, the Russians. Besides, this is not charity. This is good money, good prices.”
This came as Putin previously told a Kremlin audience: “Speaking of potatoes, my father got me into this. It’s not easy work, planting these potatoes, then weeding them. Robotics, at first glance, is more interesting….
“Yesterday, I repeat, I also met with representatives of…the agricultural sector. As it turns out we don’t have enough potatoes. I talked to Alexander Lukashenko and he said: ‘We have already sold everything to Russia.’”
Lukashenko removed his own ban on importing potatoes from the EU to boost supplies amid the new order from Putin.
