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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 biggest assault on a European state since World War Two was not producing rapid victories, but instead generating a far-reaching and concerted Western response. Russia’s army admitted Sunday that there were “killed and injured” soldiers among its troops in Ukraine on the fourth day of its invasion, without saying how many had died there. This was the first time Moscow had spoken about losing men in Ukraine since President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion in the early hours of Thursday
Vladimir Putin has ordered Russia’s military to put its deterrence forces, which include nuclear weapons, on “special alert”. He told defence chiefs it was because of “aggressive statements” by the West, amid widespread condemnation of his invasion of Ukraine. The move means Putin has ordered Russia’s nuclear weapons prepared for increased readiness to launch, raising the threat that the tensions could boil over into a nuclear war. In giving it, the Russian leader also cited hard-hitting financial sanctions imposed by the West against Russia, including Putin himself.
The EU announced it would fund weapons supplies to the Ukrainian armed forces, including fighter jets, block European airspace to all Russian aircraft including the private jets of oligarchs, and banned the Kremlin’s propaganda channel RT, and its news agency, Sputnik. Remember Russia has nuclear weapons that can eradicate this world or poison the air.
