Moscow Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the nuclear power’s deterrent weapons to be put on special alert. Putin ordered this on Sunday in a video distributed by the Kremlin. He spoke of deterrent weapons and did not explicitly mention nuclear weapons.
“As you can see, Western countries are taking unfriendly measures against our country not only in economic terms,” Putin said on state TV. “I mean the illegal sanctions, which everyone knows very well.” In addition, top representatives of the leading NATO countries also allow themselves “aggressive statements towards our country”.
He instructed Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the chief of staff to place the nuclear deterrent in a “special regime” of combat readiness, he said at a meeting with his top advisers on Sunday. His order means that Russian nuclear weapons are put on increased readiness for launch. In the past few days, Putin had already threatened terrible consequences if a country intervened directly in the Ukraine conflict.
NATO is worried
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg expressed concern about Putin’s decision in an initial reaction. “It shows how serious the situation is and why we really have to stand together (…)” he said in a BBC interview on Sunday.
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He initially gave no information on a possible reaction by NATO to Putin’s announcement. According to information from the alliance, there are no automatisms for such a case. NATO decisions must be made by consensus among all 30 member states. The NATO nuclear powers USA, France and Great Britain could already react.
The US, Japan and the EU want to exclude certain Russian banks from the Swift payment system. In addition, there should be other sanctions against Russia.
In Moscow and other Russian cities, people took to the streets after Putin’s video message was broadcast on television. The protests were also directed against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The American ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said live on a US news program on CBS that Putin was escalating the war in a completely unacceptable manner. This must be condemned in the strongest possible way.
This is how the Handelsblatt reports on the developments in the Ukraine war:
After Putin’s speech, the Stockholm peace research institute Sipri announced that it did not expect the Ukraine war to lead to the use of nuclear weapons. “I don’t think nuclear war is a likely consequence of this crisis,” said Sipri Director Dan Smith of the German Press Agency in Scandinavia. “If nuclear weapons exist, then unfortunately there is always this small possibility. And that would be catastrophic.”
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