Putin puts nuclear deterrent on ‘high alert’

KYIV: President Vladimir Putin put Russia’s nuclear deterrent on high alert on Sunday in the face of a barrage of Western reprisals for his war on Ukraine, which said it had repelled Russian ground forces attacking its biggest cities.

The United States said Putin was escalating the war with “dangerous rhetoric”, amid signs that the assault was not producing rapid victories, but instead generating a far-reaching and concerted Western response. Less than four days after it started, the invasion has triggered a Western political, strategic, economic and corporate response unprecedented in its extent and coordination.

“With this war on Ukraine, the world will never be the same again,” EU’s foreign policy chief Josef Borrell wrote in an opinion piece in a newspaper. “It is now, more than ever, the time for societies and alliances to come together to build our future on trust, justice and freedom. It is the moment to stand up and to speak out. Might does not make right. Never did. Never will,” he said.

The European Union decided for the first time in its history to supply weapons to a country at war. Borrell at a news conference said EU’s support would include providing fighter jets. The European Union’s chief executive Ursula von der Leyen expressed support for Ukraine’s membership, saying “they are one of us.”

The rouble plunged nearly 30% to an all-time low versus the dollar early on Monday, after Western nations on Saturday unveiled harsh sanctions including blocking some banks from the SWIFT international payments system. On Sunday, the president of neutral Switzerland said he expected his government to follow the EU with Russia sanctions and freezing Russian assets. read more

The Ukrainian president’s office said negotiations with Moscow without preconditions would be held at the Belarusian-Ukrainian border. As missiles fell on Ukrainian cities, nearly 400,000 civilians, mainly women and children, have fled into neighbouring countries, a UN relief agency said.

Hundreds were stranded in Kyiv on Sunday waiting for trains to take them west, away from the fighting. The capital remained in Ukrainian government hands, with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy rallying his people daily despite Russian shelling of civilian infrastructure.

The EU shut all Russian planes out of its airspace, as did Canada, forcing Russian airline Aeroflot to cancel all flights to European destinations until further notice. With flight options dwindling, the United States and France urged their citizens to consider leaving Russia immediately. read more The EU also banned the Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik.

Germany, which had already frozen a planned undersea gas pipeline from Russia, said it would increase defence spending massively, casting off decades of reluctance to match its economic power with military clout.

British oil major BP, the biggest foreign investor in Russia, said it was abandoning its stake in state oil company Rosneft at a cost of up to $25 billion, shrinking its oil and gas reserves in half. Several European subsidiaries of Sberbank Russia, majority-owned by the Russian government, were failing or were likely to fail due to reputational cost of the war in Ukraine, the European Central Bank said.

At least 352 civilians, including 14 children, have been killed and 1,684 people have been wounded, Ukraine’s Health Ministry said. On Sunday, Putin cited aggressive statements by NATO leaders and the raft of economic sanctions imposed on Russia by the West.

“Not only do Western countries take unfriendly measures against our country in the economic dimension – I mean the illegal sanctions that everyone knows about very well – but also the top officials of leading NATO countries allow themselves to make aggressive statements with regards to our country,” he said on state television.

Putin previously referred to his nuclear arsenal in a speech announcing the start of the invasion on Thursday, saying Russia’s response to any country that stood in its way would be immediate and carry “consequences that you have never encountered in your history”.

The EU’s Borrell said Russia had clearly threatened a nuclear attack on countries supporting Ukraine after the invasion. “We are afraid that Russia is not going to stop in Ukraine,” he said.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, at the U.N. Security Council, urged “Russia to tone down this dangerous rhetoric regarding nuclear weapons.” Moscow acknowledged that Russian soldiers had been killed and wounded, but said its losses were far lower than those suffered by Ukraine. In New York, the UN Security Council convened a rare emergency meeting of the UN General Assembly.