A Secret Military Base Is Being Built 60 Kilometers From Minsk

• 10.09.2025, 12:45

Photofact.

In Slutsk district near the village of Pavlovka there is an active construction of a facility, which experts call strategic in military terms for the Belarusian authorities and make an assumption that the Russian ballistic missile system "Oreshnik" can be deployed here. This was found out by journalists of Belarusian service "Radio Liberty", analyzing satellite images of the Planet Labs company within the framework of a joint project with the "Schemes" team of the Ukrainian service "Radio Liberty" and Estonian publications Delfi Estonia and Eesti Ekspress.

The construction on this place began almost a year ago, in June 2024. At the moment, the development area is more than 2 square kilometers. That's about 280 soccer fields. The facility has four separate parts - the main part and three almost equal in area next to each other. All of them are connected by newly built roads.

Since the construction has not been completed yet, it is difficult for the experts the journalists talked to to estimate what kind of military facility will appear here.

But it can be concluded that the project is being done in secret. "Svoboda" has not found any references to the beginning of construction in public official documents, local media do not write about it, there are no fresh marks in cadastral maps about the allocation of land plots for the construction of such facilities. Neither Alexander Lukashenko nor his officials have announced anything of the sort.

But back in May 2024, the place looked like this in a story by the state-run "VoenTV":

Secret Soviet military base with nuclear weapons

The place where the construction site is being built has a military past. It was in these woods that from the end of 1959 to 1993, the military camp of the 306th Strategic Missile Regiment in Slutsk was located. In 1960, the 1057th repair and maintenance base was established there, which was responsible for the "nuclear technical support" of this unit.

The missiles that were located here during the Soviet era threatened first the whole of Europe, and later the United States of America.

First they were medium-range ground-based missiles R-12 (SS-4) with a range of up to 2.1 thousand kilometers, since 1981 there were self-propelled combat systems RSD-10m "Pioneer" (SS-20) with a range of up to 5 thousand kilometers. Since 1989, the regiment was rearmed with Topol strategic missile systems (SS-25) with a range of up to 11 thousand kilometers.

In 1993, Belarus joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. It became the first state to voluntarily give up the possibility of owning weapons that remained in the country after the collapse of the USSR. In the same year, the 306th Slutsk regiment was taken off combat duty and redeployed to Russia, where it was later disbanded.

In September 1996, there was still an artillery ammunition base here, where a fire broke out with the detonation of shells. According to local media, the explosions sounded for several days, and they were heard as far as 20 kilometers away, in Slutsk.

After that incident, the military facility near Pavlovka fell into disrepair. And in 2005, in one of its parts they even opened a medical and labor preventorium № 3. As Svoboda previously wrote, on August 10, 2020, they tried to make something similar to a concentration camp for protesters.

But on other parts of the former secret base, fortifications, missile launch pads, mines, bunkers, hangars and other military facilities still remain abandoned.

In 2019, one of the entrepreneurs wanted to build an enterprise for processing oil-contaminated soil on one of the small sections of the military town. At the end of 2020, the Slutsk district executive committee tried to take away this land plot, but it was denied by the Supreme Court. It is not known how the story ended. But it seems unlikely that a small private company could organize construction on such a large territory.

"Second life" of the military camp

At about the spring of 2024 the territory began to be "developed" in a new way. First, sappers from the Mine Action Center of the Armed Forces came here to clear the area of shells. The work lasted almost the entire spring and ended only on June 7, 2024. According to the military, during this time they destroyed 2,800 munitions on an area of about 2.5 square kilometers.

Since June 16, 2024, the clearing of the territory from the forest and excavation work began here. The most active period of construction came in 2025.

At that time, more than a square kilometer of forest was cleared in the western part of the site and 13 ammunition depots measuring 30 by 20 meters and surrounded by defensive walls were erected. Here they also built three hangars 100 meters long, laid the foundations of various kinds of buildings, one of them in the shape of the letter "U" almost 270 meters long. All these buildings are connected by a network of roads, most of which are already paved with asphalt.

The northern construction site near the village of Pavlovka is located on land that was still used for agriculture in the summer. Now 8 frames of buildings, similar to hangars, are already visible here.

The easternmost construction site shows the frame of a building almost 150 meters long, earth embankments are being built.

The southeastern construction site is still being excavated, the formation of several roads can be seen. Perhaps it is not by chance that it is located on the highest hill of Slutsk district, which may indicate the probable placement of, for example, air defense systems here.

On the forums of stalkers can be found the following description of this place:

"Mount Signalnaya - the highest place in the Slutsk district, the tower belonged to the communication company of missileers"

What all this means

To understand what kind of object is being built in the Slutsk district near the village of Pavlovka, journalists turned to military experts and analysts. All of them agree that the facility is special and may be of strategic importance.

Konrad Muzyka, director of Rochan Consulting, which is engaged in research and analysis of security in the post-Soviet space, notes in a comment to "Svoboda" that all the facilities are connected by a road and there is "a significant link between them."

"In my opinion, these facilities are connected with some equipment of strategic level, which can be deployed in Belarus. Either that 'Oreshnik' or something else. It could be nuclear weapons, as this place could be used for facilities that were used to store this kind of weapons during the Cold War," says Konrad Muzyka.

Retired Major Marko Eklund, who analyzed the Russian army in Finnish intelligence for more than 20 years and now works with satellite imagery, also notes in an interview with Eesti Ekspress that this site looks exactly like a strategic missile base: "I can't say what else it could be. If the Oreshnik base were to appear here, it could be just right for this role."