Putin puts Russia on nuclear alert

Moscow delegation set to meet Ukraine leader

KYIV, Ukraine — President Vladimir Putin escalated East-West tensions by ordering Russian nuclear forces put on high alert Sunday, while Ukraine’s leader agreed to talks with Moscow as Putin’s troops and tanks drove deeper into the country, closing in around the capital.

Citing “aggressive statements” by NATO and tough financial sanctions, Putin issued a directive to increase the readiness of Russia’s nuclear weapons, raising fears that the invasion of Ukraine could lead to nuclear war, whether by design or mistake.

The Russian leader is “potentially putting in play forces that, if there’s a miscalculation, could make things much, much more dangerous,” said a senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Putin’s directive came as Russian forces encountered strong resistance from Ukraine defenders. Moscow for a meeting with a Russian delegation at an unspecified location on the Belarusian border.

An earlier meeting had been ruled out because of security concerns, but Zelenskyy’s office said Sunday that the meeting would be held “without preconditions.” No timing has been announced, and the Kremlin has said mil

itary actions will continue.

The conflict is expected to change significantly if Russia gets military help from neighboring Belarus, which is expected to send troops into Ukraine as soon as today, according to a senior American intelligence official with direct knowledge of current U.S. intelligence assessments. The official, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said that whether Belarus enters the war depends on the Ukraine-Russia talks.

In another development today, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said European countries will supply fighter jets to Ukraine, in addition to other support they have provided.

Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations, Sergiy Kyslytsya, said of the talks: “We will be happy if the result of the negotiations is peace and the end of war. But we will not give up, we will not capitulate, we will not give an inch of our territory.”

The fast-moving developments came as scattered fighting was reported in Kyiv. Battles also broke out in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, and strategic ports in the country’s south came under assault from Russian forces.

The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said today that missiles have hit a radioactive waste disposal site in Kyiv, but that there are no reports of damage to the buildings or indications of a release of radioactive material. The watchdog said it was informed by Ukrainian authorities of the incident, but did not specify which side was believed to have fired the missiles.

By late Sunday, Russian forces had taken Berdyansk, a Ukrainian city of 100,000 on the Azov Sea coast, according to Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to Zelenskyy’s office. Russian troops also made advances toward Kherson, another city in the south of Ukraine, while Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov that is considered a prime Russian target, is “hanging on,” Arestovich said.

With Russian troops closing in around Kyiv, a city of almost 3 million, the mayor of the capital expressed doubt that civilians could be evacuated. Authorities have been handing out weapons to anyone willing to defend the city. Ukraine is also releasing prisoners with military experience who want to fight, and training people to make firebombs.

In Mariupol, where Ukrainians were trying to fend off attack, a medical team at a city hospital desperately tried to revive a 6-year-old girl in unicorn pajamas who was mortally wounded in Russian shelling.

During the rescue attempt, a doctor in blue medical scrubs, pumping oxygen into the girl, looked directly into the reporter’s video camera capturing the scene.

“Show this to Putin,” he said angrily. “The eyes of this child, and crying doctors.”

Their resuscitation efforts failed, and the girl lay dead on a gurney.

‘UNDER NO THREAT’

Putin, in ordering the nuclear alert, cited not only statements by NATO members but the hard-hitting financial sanctions imposed by the West against Russia, including Putin himself.

“Western countries aren’t only taking unfriendly actions against our country in the economic sphere, but top officials from leading NATO members made aggressive statements regarding our country,” Putin said.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations reminded the Security Council on Sunday afternoon that Russia was “under no threat” and chided Putin for “another escalatory and unnecessary step that threatens us all.” The White House made it clear that America’s own alert status had not changed.

It was the second time in a week that Putin has reminded the world, and Washington, that he has a massive arsenal and might be tempted to use it. But what made the latest nuclear outburst notable was that it was staged for television, as Putin told his generals that he was acting because of the West’s “aggressive comments” about Ukraine.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that Putin is resorting to the pattern he used in the weeks before the invasion, “which is to manufacture threats that don’t exist in order to justify further aggression.”

Graham T. Allison of Harvard University, whose study of the Kennedy administration’s handling of the Cuban missile crisis, “Essence of Decision,” has been read by many of the national security staff surrounding Biden today said Putin’s citation of “aggressive comments” as a justification for putting one of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals on alert status seemed both disproportionate and puzzling, he said. “It makes no sense.”

Allison, who worked on the project to decommission thousands of nuclear weapons that once belonged to the Soviet Union, which centered on Ukraine, said the incident is “adding to the worry that Putin’s grasp on reality may be loosening.”

A vast nuclear-detection apparatus run by the United States and its allies monitors Russia’s nuclear forces at all times, and experts said they would not be surprised to see Russian bombers taken out of their hangars and loaded with nuclear weapons, or submarines stuffed with nuclear weapons leave port and head out to sea.

Both Russia and the U.S. conduct drills that replicate various levels of nuclear alert status, so the choreography of such moves is understood by both sides. A deviation from usual practice would almost certainly be noticeable.

The ground-based nuclear forces — the intercontinental ballistic missiles kept in silos by both nations — are always in a state of readiness, a keystone to the strategy of “mutually assured destruction” that helped avoid nuclear exchanges at even the most tense moments of the Cold War.

Until last week, the two nations were meeting regularly to discuss new arms-control regimes, including a revival of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which President Donald Trump abandoned in 2019. But the U.S. said last week that it was suspending those talks.

In recent years, Russia has adopted a doctrine that lowers the threshold for using nuclear arms, and for making public threats of unleashing their powers in deadly atomic strikes.

“It’s what he does,” Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, a global policy think tank in Washington, said in an interview. “It’s verbal saber-rattling. We’ll see where he goes with it. This war is four days old and he’s already made nuclear threats twice.”

Russia and the United States typically have land- and submarine-based nuclear forces that are on alert and prepared for combat at all times, but nuclear-capable bombers and other aircraft are not.

If Putin is arming or otherwise raising the nuclear combat readiness of his bombers, or if he is ordering more ballistic missile submarines to sea, then the U.S. might feel compelled to respond in kind, Kristensen said.

UKRAINE RESISTANCE

In Ukraine, Russia’s attempts to quickly force the elected government into submission were met with strong resistance. Russian armored vehicles drove within a few miles of downtown Kharkiv, home to 1.5 million people. But by Sunday afternoon, the sounds of bombardment had faded, and Gov. Oleg Synyehubov reported that the city remained under Ukrainian control.

Synyehubov has told residents to “stay at home and hide during the complete destruction of the Russian enemy in the city.” Videos from the city, which is 300 miles east of Kyiv, depicted Ukrainian soldiers firing rocket-propelled grenades from shoulder-mounted launchers near a line of abandoned Russian vehicles.

In downtown Kharkiv, 86-year-old Olena Dudnik said she and her husband were nearly thrown from their bed by the pressure blast of a nearby explosion.

“We are suffering immensely,” she said by phone. “We don’t have much food in the pantry, and I worry the stores aren’t going to have anything either, if they reopen.” She added: “I just want the shooting to stop, people to stop being killed.”

Russian forces have nevertheless marked some early victories. Kupyansk, a city of 28,000 in northeast Ukraine, surrendered to Russian control after threats of military bombardment, its mayor, Gennady Matsegora, said in a video message. He said he’d been assured by the Russians that schools and hospitals would remain open, adding, “We must come together and get back to normal life.”

Earlier Sunday, Kyiv was eerily quiet after explosions lit up the morning sky and authorities reported blasts at one airport. A main boulevard was practically deserted as a strict curfew kept people off the streets. Authorities warned that anyone venturing out without a pass would be considered a Russian saboteur.

Terrified residents hunkered down in homes, underground garages and subway stations in anticipation of a full-scale Russian assault. Food and medicine were running low, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

“Right now, the most important question is to defend our country,” Klitschko said.

Even though Russian troops are being slowed by Ukrainian resistance, fuel shortages and other logistical problems, a senior U.S. defense official said that will probably change. “We are in day four. The Russians will learn and adapt,” the official said.

The number of casualties from Europe’s largest land conflict since World War II remained unclear amid the confusion.

Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said Sunday that 352 Ukrainian civilians have been killed, including 14 children. It said an additional 1,684 people, including 116 children, have been wounded.

Despite Ukraine’s losses, Russia’s advance has nevertheless been blunted by tactical embarrassments. Russian troops have been stranded on roadsides when their vehicles ran out of fuel, and small regiments deployed deep into Ukraine have been quickly surrounded, captured or killed.

The Russian military acknowledged Sunday for the first time that it had lost troops in the fighting, with Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov saying an unspecified number “of our comrades have been killed or injured.”

He gave no figures on Russia’s dead and wounded but said Sunday his country’s losses were “many times” lower than Ukraine’s.

About 368,000 Ukrainians have arrived in neighboring countries since the invasion started Thursday, according to the U.N. refugee agency.

Russia, which massed almost 200,000 troops along Ukraine’s borders, claims its assault is aimed only at military targets. Ukrainian officials have charged that Russian soldiers have indiscriminately fired on ambulances, kindergartens and residential neighborhoods.

Information for this article was contributed by Yuras Karmanau, Jim Heintz, Vladimir Isachenkov, Dasha Litvinova, Ellen Knickmeyer, Eric Tucker, Robert Burns, Hope Yen, Francesca Ebel, Josef Federman, Andrew Drake, Mstyslav Chernov, Nic Dumitrache and staff members of The Associated Press; Karoun Demirjian, Paulina Firozi, Amy B Wang, Hannah Knowles, Missy Ryan, Elyse Samuels, Paul Sonne, Jeff Stein, Danielle Paquette, Jennifer Hassan, Annabelle Timsit, Chico Harlan, Rick Noack, David L. Stern, Isabelle Khurshudyan, Drew Harwell, Robyn Dixon, Miriam Berger, Siobhán O’Grady and Sudarsan Raghavan of The Washington Post; and David E. Sanger and William J. Broad of The New York Times.