Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday ordered that the country’s nuclear deterrence forces be put on alert, ratcheting up tensions over the invasion of Ukraine.
“I order the defense minister and the chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces to put the deterrence forces of the Russian army into a special mode of combat service,” Putin said in a televised address.
The decision comes after Western leaders agreed to a fresh wave of sanctions on Moscow, including freezing Putin’s personal assets and cutting some Russian banks from the SWIFT international payments system.
