Vladimir Putin ordered this Sunday around 2 p.m. the putting on alert of the Russian deterrent force, which includes a nuclear component, on the fourth day of the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces. During a meeting in the Kremlin with his military leaders, broadcast on television, the Russian president considered that the main powers of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) had made “aggressive statements” and that the The West had imposed severe financial sanctions on Russia, which affected itself.
“I order the Minister of Defense and the Chief of Staff to put the deterrent forces of the Russian army on special combat alert,” he said. This expression is difficult to explain. The Russian deterrent forces are a set of units whose purpose is to deter an attack on Russia, “including in the event of war involving the use of nuclear weapons”, according to the Ministry of Defense.
“Unacceptable” escalation and “irresponsible” conduct
Vladimir Putin “manufactures threats”, denounced the United States in the process. “This is a repeated pattern that we have seen from President Putin during this conflict, which is to fabricate threats that do not exist in order to justify continued aggression,” the door said. – White House spokesperson, Jen Psaki. This announcement from Moscow “means that President Putin is continuing to escalate this war, in a way that is totally unacceptable”, added the American ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
Ukraine, for its part, castigated this nuclear “pressure”, while NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg denounced this decision. “This is dangerous rhetoric. It is behavior that is irresponsible,” he told CNN.
Chemical weapons and stealth missiles
The deterrent force can also include chemical weapons and stealth missiles faster than sound, therefore almost impossible to intercept, such as the Russian Zircon. “This is the highest form of combat readiness,” writes Russian journalist Mary Ilyushina, who works for The Washington Post, on Twitter.
Almost at the time when the televisions relayed the meeting in the Kremlin, Ukraine agreed to send a delegation to discuss with the Russian emissaries in Belarus. During a Russian meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to a meeting between the two delegations on the border of Ukraine and Belarus, near the Pripyat river.