Putin Puts Russia's Nuke Forces On Alert But U.S. Mocks His Bluff

In a dramatic escalation of East-West tensions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian nuclear forces put on high alert Sunday in response to what he called “aggressive statements” by leading NATO powers, Yuras Karmanau, Jim Heintz, Vladimir Isachenkov, and Dasha Litvinova reported for the Associated Press (AP).

Photo Insert: The order means Putin wants Russia’s nuclear weapons prepared for increased readiness to launch.

The order means Putin wants Russia’s nuclear weapons prepared for increased readiness to launch and raises the threat that Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and the West’s response to it could boil over into nuclear warfare.

In giving the directive, Putin cited not only the alleged statements by NATO members but the hard-hitting financial sanctions imposed by the West against Russia and Putin himself.

Putin and his oligarch cronies are estimated to have $800 billion in assets worldwide. Amid the worrying development, the office of Ukraine’s president said a delegation would meet with Russian officials as Moscow’s troops drew closer to Kyiv.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Putin was resorting to a pattern he used in the weeks before launching the invasion of Ukraine, “which is to manufacture threats that don’t exist in order to justify further aggression. The global community and American people should look at it through that prism. We’ve seen him do this time and time again.”

She told ABC’s “This Week” that Russia has not been under threat from NATO or Ukraine. “This is all a pattern from President Putin and we’re going to stand up ... we have the ability to defend ourselves but we also need to call out what we’re seeing here,” Psaki said.

Ukraine’s health minister reported Saturday, Feb. 26, that 198 people, including three children, had been killed and more than 1,000 others wounded. It was unclear whether those figures included both military and civilian casualties. Russia has not released any casualty information.

Ukraine’s UN ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, tweeted Saturday that Ukraine appealed to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) “to facilitate repatriation of thousands of bodies of Russian soldiers.” An accompanying chart claimed 3,500 Russian troops have been killed.

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