A view of Khreshchatyk, the main street, empty, due to curfew in the central of Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022. A Ukrainian official says street fighting has broken out in Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv. Russian troops also put increasing pressure on strategic ports in the country's south following a wave of attacks on airfields and fuel facilities elsewhere that appeared to mark a new phase of Russia's invasion. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Efrem Lukatsky / AP
Efrem Lukatsky / AP
A view of Khreshchatyk, the main street, empty, due to curfew in the central of Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022. A Ukrainian official says street fighting has broken out in Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv. Russian troops also put increasing pressure on strategic ports in the country's south following a wave of attacks on airfields and fuel facilities elsewhere that appeared to mark a new phase of Russia's invasion. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
(Kyiv, Ukraine) — President Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian nuclear forces on alert amid tensions with the West over his invasion of Ukraine.
Speaking at a meeting with his top officials, Putin asserted on Sunday that leading NATO powers had made “aggressive statements” along with the West imposing hard-hitting financial sanctions against Russia, including the president himself.
Putin ordered the Russian defense minister and the chief of the military’s General Staff to put the nuclear deterrent forces in a “special regime of combat duty.”
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations responded to the news by saying, “President Putin is continuing to escalate this war in a manner that is totally unacceptable.”
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